[chbot] SUre Electronics ARV programmers.

[Charles Manning]

On Friday 23 September 2011 20:51:30 Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
> On Thu 22 Sep 2011 09:23:07 NZST +1200, hamster wrote:
> > Has anybody any experience  with the AVR programmers from Sure
> > Electronics?
> >
> > http://www.sureelectronics.net/goods.php?id=1099  US$39
> > http://www.sureelectronics.net/goods.php?id=982   US$23
> > http://www.sureelectronics.net/goods.php?id=18    US$16
> > (postage is $7.10)
>
> Just at the prices I probably wouldn't bother.
> I understand any Arduino can be turned into a programmer by loading the
> right program and connecting it up to the target (e.g. another Arduino).
> If you then use the Arduino built-in boot loader you only need to
> program this once. Hardly worth a lot of $$, you can always find a spare
> Arduino in the bottom drawer. Dedicate it to the purpose if you don't
> use the native boot loader.
>
> So I came to the conclusion of who cares about the programmer, they're
> cheap as dirt and about as common.
>
> The better question to ask IMHO is how to make this work with JTAG, or
> whatever the smaller AVRs use as equivalent. Once that's sorted you have
> the programmer with it (all those JTAGs can program too).

If you get a simple FTDI-based ARM JTAGGER 

eg.
http://www.olimex.com/dev/arm-usb-tiny-h.html
http://www.amontec.com/jtagkey-tiny.shtml  <-- I have one of these
http://www.tincantools.com/product.php?productid=16134

you can use it for full debug of all debuggable ARM devices using OpenOCD (so 
long as voltages are right)
**and**
you can use exactly the same programmer to program AVRs using AVRdude.

-- Charles