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?

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” »

First up we have spools of 2mm desoldering wick. This stuff is indispensible. It’s made of fine braided copper which soaks up solder using capillary action. It is primarily used for desoldering but also comes in handy for soldering surface mounted components by hand.

Continue reading “Finishing off the month with 2 new products” »

When cutting leads on a circuit board, standard diagonal cutters will do the job but for a neater job Flush diagonal cutters are the way to go. The flush cutting blade allows you to get closer to the PCB and makes a cleaner cut.

These are now available in our tools section for just $8.50.

Last week, one of our customers, Martin Ederveen showed us what he made with his ATMEGA168 Experimenter’s Kit, an LCD clock.

Continue reading “Customer Project – LCD Clock” »

Sometime last year we ran out of ATmega8 microcontrollers. These became obsolete and were being replaced by the ATmega8A. Unfortunately we have seen huge shortages in AVR microcontrollers over the last 18 months and the new ATmega8A was no different.

Whilst shortages still continue, we have managed to get hold of some ATmega8As in the PDIP package (ATMEGA8A-PU). They are available on their own for $3.90 or as part of a development kit for $18.50. To be fair to everyone we are limiting the purchase of the ATmega8As to a maximum of 5 per order.