Electronics Production

Make an in-circuit programmer by milling the PCB,
then optionally trying other processes USB power/make clean/make hex/make fuse/make program/make IDC ISP cable programming.

Make and Program an ISP Programer

This week assignment was to make and program an ISP programer. I don’t have any previous background in electronics there for I turn to my team as well to my local and regional instructors for supports in the electronic challenges. This is the opportunity to thank you all.

I chose two of the given designs:


  1. Brian's FabTinyISP

  1. David's FabISP

Milling & Stuffing

1. Working with the Fabmoduls
  1. Choosing a milling bit
  2. Loading a PNG file (resizing or inverting it)
  3. The milling course:
    • Setting the amount of offsets
    • Setting the 'Z' depth
    • Hitting the 'make .path'
  4. Setting the begin of milling 'X' & 'Y' coordinates
  5. Make .rml
  6. Send it!

***I used an old version of Fab Modules because of a poor networking conection***

2. Milling with the Roland Modela MDX20 Milling Machine
3. Checking the traces for any short circuits
4. The board's BOM:
  • 1x ATtiny45
  • 2x 1kΩ resistors
  • 2x 499Ω resistors
  • 2x 49Ω resistors
  • 2x 3.3v zener diodes
  • 1x red LED
  • 1x green LED
  • 1x 100nF capacitor
  • 1x 2x3 pin header
5. Soldering
Programing the board

At this stage I focused on Brian’s FabTinyISP board, following the instruction from this tutorial.

Here are the working steps for the programing:
  1. Setting the developing environment
  2. Programing:
    1. Downloading and running the firmware
    2. Updating the firmware
    3. 'Make flash'
  3. Identifying the ISP

Downloading and running the firmware

'Make flash'

Identifying the ISP