Using USBtinyISP with homebrew Arduinos in Linux

Using USBtinyISP with homebrew Arduinos in Linux

I had some problems getting my cheap eBay USBtinyISP programmer clone to work in Ubuntu so I thought I’d share some hints or at least write them down for the next time I need them.
Some of the information in this post applies only to Linux systems and I haven’t used it in Windows so I don’t know how that works.

Cheap USBtinyISP clone connected to a breadboard "Arduino"
Cheap USBtinyISP clone connected to a breadboard “Arduino”


If you’re going to burn an Arduino bootloader on a standalone chip for example on a breadboard you normally don’t have any ISP headers available and therefore have to connect the wires by yourself. It’s of course possible to put the chip into a real Arduino board and plug into the ICSP header on the Arduino but I don’t like to jerk chips in and out of my Arduino sockets all the time because it’s just a matter of time before something breaks.
I’m going to assume we’re using a breadboard to hook up the chip being programmed in this example.

It doesn’t matter which of the ICSP connectors you choose to connect to your breadboard. None of them are suitable for breadboard connection anyway since they are both 2-row connectors. There are ICSP breakout boards available that make them easier to use on breadboards but we’re not going to use one this time.
The fastest and cheapest (and probably ugliest) way is to simply connect jumper wires from the ICSP connector to the breadboard.

This is the 6-pin ICSP connector pictured from above so you will have to think a bit when you look at the connector from the bottom side where you insert the jumper wires.

6-pin ICSP connector pinout
6-pin ICSP connector pinout

The 10-pin connectors are a bit different but they have these six connectors too and they are all we need. Google up a picture of the 10-pin connector if you need to use that.

The ICSP connectors are wired to the SPI pins on the ATmega. Connect the six pins according to the following table:

Pin Connect to
MISO  ATmega328 Pin 18 (Arduino D12)
VCC 5V on your board
SCK ATmega328 pin 19 (Arduino D13)
MOSI ATmega328 pin 17 (Arduino D11)
RST ATmega328 pin 1 (directly to pin 1 without 0.1 uF cap)
GND GND on your board

In addition to this the ATmega needs to be hooked up to Vcc and GND and needs an external 16MHz crystal.
The programmers often has a jumper for supply power. With the jumper installed the programmer will supply power to your circuit so you don’t need to install an external power source.

I ran into problems whenever I had something else connected to any of the four SPI pins. For example I’m used to having a led connected immediately to D13 for debugging reasons (compatible with the built in LED on Arduino boards). I didn’t get any response from the ATmega when trying to program it or querying  it using avrdude. My guess is that my LED pulled down the the clock pulses. Removing my LED solved the problem anyway. This obviously isn’t a problem with the built in LED on the Arduino board and I don’t know exactly how they hooked it up but I’m pretty sure they didn’t connect it right onto D13 so if anyone has a recommendation or knows the trick that allows these pins to be used for other things and still be able to program the chip, post it in the comments.

Starting up

It’s now time to connect the programmer to the USB port, fire up the Arduino IDE and get burning.

The USBtinyISP will not show up as a serial port in the Arduino IDE when you connect it and it can not be used to send and receive serial data so don’t bother.

Burning bootloaders

You could try burning a bootloader from the Arduino IDE at this point by selecting a board from the boards menu and selecting Burn Bootloader -> w/ USBtinyISP.
Unless you’re going to use the chip on a Uno board or with some ATmega8U2 based USB-adapter you most likely want to choose Duemilanove or Nano w/ ATmega328. That way you can use an FTDI adapter or cable to upload sketches to it later.

Uploading sketches

You can also use the programmer as an interface for uploading Arduino sketches but that is done without utilizing an Arduino bootloader and you won’t be able to upload any more sketches to that chip using an FTDI or similar interface until you burn a new Arduino bootloader onto the chip.

To create the interface for uploading sketches using the USBtinyISP you need to add the following board definition to arduino/hardware/boards.txt:



Arduino 1.0 update:
Adding this configuration to boards.txt is no longer necessary in Arduino 1.0 since there is a new built-in function called Upload Using Programmer.

You might have luck in changing the upload speed but in my case increasing it further didn’t affect upload speed at all. My programmer burns at a speed of aproximately 1KByte/s.

After you restart Arduino the new definition will be listed as a board in the Board configuration menu. Select the board named ATmega328 w/ USBtinyISP and hit upload and the sketch will be burned to your chip.

This is useful if you want to do in system programming and don’t have an FTDI cable. When you build a permanent project that you want to be able to re-program later you just add ICSP header pins to your circuit (or a socket for the ATmega).
This is what ISP programmers are made for.

Sketches uploaded using this configuration will overwrite whatever Arduino bootloader you have on your chip and can therefore use all 32768 bytes instead of the normal 32256 bytes (UNO) or 30720 bytes (Duemilanove). That doesn’t sound like much and it isn’t all that much either but if you would use a smaller chip than the ATmega328 with let’s say 4KB of flash those bytes make up a big percentage of the total size.

Linux Permissions

To avoid having to run the Arduino IDE or avrdude as root you need to grant users the right to use the device. This is accomplished by creating a udev rule. This is how it’s done in Ubuntu:

Create the file /etc/udev/rules.d/usbtinyisp.rules containing this single row:
SUBSYSTEM==”usb”, SYSFS{idVendor}==”1781″, SYSFS{idProduct}==”0c9f”, GROUP=”adm”, MODE=”0666″

Restart udev using ‘restart udev’ after saving the file.

Ubunti 12.04 update:
After upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS the SYSFS keyword didn’t work for me anymore due to some change in udev. The following rule works after the upgrade:
SUBSYSTEM==”usb”, ATTR{idVendor}==”1781″, ATTR{idProduct}==”0c9f”, GROUP=”adm”, MODE=”0666″


Use avrdude to diagnose any errors.
To verify the connection between computer – programmer – microcontroller run the following command:

‘avrdude -c usbtiny -p m328p’

The output from the command should tell whether your setup works or give a clue to why it doesn’t. These are some examples with explanations:

avrdude: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions
avrdude: Device signature = 0x1e950f
avrdude: safemode: Fuses OK
avrdude done. Thank you.
This is what you’re aiming for. It’s a good respons that means you just talked to the ATmega and it’s begging to be programmed.

Can’t find the USBtinyISP at all. Is it connected properly?

avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1
this check.
Avrdude managed to talk to the USBtinyISP but could not detect your chip. Check the connections to your ATmega again.

avrdude: error: usbtiny_transmit: error sending control message: Operation not permitted
In Linux this means  that you probably need more permissions. Read the Linux Permissions section above.

For the lazy or frequent burner

If you don’t want to bother about putting ICSP headers on every single stripboard but still want to be able to program your chips with ease, build one of these:

USBtinyISP with ZIFduino
USBtinyISP with ZIFduino

This adapter is just a board with a ZIF-socket, 6-pin ICSP header and a fixed 16MHz crystal.
Perfect for bootloading chips or  reprogramming chips used in permanent installations.
16 MHz chips that is…

5 thoughts on “Using USBtinyISP with homebrew Arduinos in Linux

  1. Thanks, this is exactly what I needed for programming Atmega328 without swapping the Arduino CPU. Regarding your issue with the LED on pin 13, I started with 330 Ohm and ran into the same problem. The Arduino Diecimila schematic shows 1K Ohm and I tried it on this breadboard and it works fine!

    1. I have used 1K too and it works most of the time but most LEDs get quite dim and it has still failed at some points.
      I have since then tried both the UNO solution with an Op-amp on pin 13 and a solution with a mosfet on pin 13 instead and both works beautifully. You will still need a current limiting resistor on the LED though so you will end up with a higher component count and a more complex circuit so it’s probably not something you would put on your breadboard.

      1. I was going to put it onto a perf board tomorrow so good to know a simple 1K is not a reliable solution.

    1. I never did any schematics for that particular version. I did one for another version. Here

      The difference is yellow SCK LED that flashes while programming. You can skip R2, R3, R4, the mosfet and the LED if you don’t need a flashing LED.

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Google+ photo


Connecting to %s