We recently selected a new USBASP supplier who has made a few improvements.

• Addition of PPTC resettable fuse on 5V supply from USB
• JP1 (Supply Target) now has a 3 pin header to allow the selection of 3.3V on pin 2 of the ISP connector
• JP3 (Slow SCK) has been added back. This jumper was previously removed as the programmer supports software control of the SCK. Now to have a choice to use the jumper or the software control

As before, the programmers are just $18.00

The USBASP windows driver is based on libusb-win32. Back in May last year, we released version 1.2.4.0 of the driver. That version was a big improvement over the previous one as it was partly signed.

Since then, the libusb-win32 project has released version 1.2.5.0 of their driver. This driver is now fully signed, so installation is easier than before.

Download links are below

• http://www.protostack.com/download/USBasp-win-driver-x86-x64-ia64-v1.2.5.zip
• http://www.protostack.com/download/USBasp-win-driver-x86-x64-ia64-v1.2.5.rar

It’s been a while since we’ve had new stock in, but the drought is over. This month we add 13 new products to our lineup.

Continue reading “Finishing the year off with 13 new products” »

There is a bit over 2 weeks left for the 7400 Contest with entries closing on October 21st.

There are heaps of prizes up for grabs, including 3 ATmega328 Development Kits, Hack Packs from Dangerous Prorotypes and prize packs from Freetronics.

What will you build?

A few hacks to make bread boarding easier…

1. Hacking the power buses

The power buses on a breadboard are constructed in multiple pieces. To get continuity down the length of the bus Continue reading “8 Breadboard Hacks” »

We’ve been getting a lot of requests to stock Atmel ATmega328 microcontrollers and they have finally arrived. The ATmega328-PU is the through-hole variety and fits onto our 28 pin AVR Development Board.

The ATmega328 is almost identical to the ATmega168a but has double the Flash, double the EEPROM and double the SRAM.

It can be purchase individually for $5.80 or as part of a development kit for $20.80.

This month we have a nice collection of new products, 9 in total.

Continue reading “9 new products for July” »

Dimming an incandescent bulb is easy. Simply adjust the current down using a potentiometer and you are done. Dimming an LED is another story entirely. When you reduce current through an LED there are unintended consequences like color shifts and dropouts. A better way is to use Pulse Width Modulation (PWM).

Continue reading “ATmega168A Pulse Width Modulation – PWM” »

Until now, the USBASP windows driver wasn’t signed. On older versions of windows this was’t too much of a problem as you could override the signature error. On Windows Vista x64 and Windows 7, it is almost a show stopper.

Various methods have been suggested including a utility called Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider or Pressing F8 at boot time and selecting Disable Driver Signature Enforcement. These approaches were far from ideal.

With the release of libusb-win32 version 1.2.4.0 this is a thing of the past. A new USBASP driver is now available; is based on the libusb-win32 driver; and supports 32 and 64 bit windows. It is partially signed which means windows still produces a warning during installation, but that warning does not prevent installation of the driver.

OK, now for the installation procedure…

Continue reading “USBASP driver for Windows 7 and Windows Vista x64” »

This week we have something that is so simple, it hardly qualifies as a tutorial, so let’s call it a “tip” and get started.

For some time we’ve stocked 2 pin and 3 pin terminal blocks. These terminal blocks have standard 5.08mm spacing, so they fit in all our development and prototyping boards. This is all good, but what do you do if you need a 4-way, 5-way or even bigger terminal block?

Continue reading “Extending Terminal Blocks” »