Circuit Design

Motivated by the difficulties to get surface mounting components in the local electronic shops, we decided to look for other alternatives with DIP components (through-hole) that could be acquired locally.

The first barrier was the microcontroller. The suggested ATTiny proved to be difficult to get; instead, the ATMega 8 was readily available in DIP package.

 

 

This served as a base to find an alternative to an AVR programmer USBasp by Thomas Fischl that included several alternatives using the DIP package and a single layer board. A render of the programmer can be seen below along with the schematic and board design in Eagle.

 

 

 

 

The board was milled as before and the components were soldered much easier than the surface mount components due to its larger size.

 

 

 

 

 

In the end, the USB cable was soldered directly due to a shortage of supply of the connector at the local store. Additionally a 10 pin ribbon cable was made for the programming operation.