The Wellon VP-290 Universal Programmer is one of the cheapest universal programmers on the market but its build quality and reliability are excellent. It only has a 40-pin ZIF socket unlike other Wellon programmers that have 48-pin ZIF sockets. This means it is really only suitable for devices with 40 pins are less. The only exception is chips in 44 PLCC packages, such as AVR microcontrollers, which are supported by the VP-290.
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Microcontrollers are in everything nowadays from simple items like dimmer switches to complex systems such as your mobile phone. Learning microcontroller programming allows you to create a huge range of embedded projects only limited by your imagination.
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Kanda have become distributors for Waveshare who manufacture low cost but high quality products. As well as a range of Arduino boards and shields, Waveshare make AVR microcontroller tools, Bluetooth, WiFi and Zigbee modules and FPGA development kits and programmers.
The PIC16F877A (and earlier PIC16F877) are microntrollers supplied by Microchip. It is just one device among many PIC microcontrollers and it is a veteran chip compared with many others. There are lots of articles, projects and circuit diagrams available on the web that use the PIC16F877A so it seems to make sense to use it but should you still use this chip?
Arduino is officially an open source electronic prototyping system, which is sold with the slogan “So easy, my granny can use it”. It is not quite as simple as that but it is pretty easy to buy a successful project and implement it quickly. So if your idea has already been done, Arduino makes it straightforward to carry it out.
If you have been using Arduino to develop your code but want to move on to develop your own AVR based circuit or want to program your Arduino board with an external programmer to give more code space, you will need to understand how to use an AVR ISP or In System Programmer. This post covers the information you need
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You can use a normal AVR ISP programmer to upload Arduino sketches to an Arduino board or to an AVR microcontroller in your own circuit, such as ATmega328P, ATmega8 or ATmega2561, but first you need to know how to find the hex files that the programmer needs. The Arduino IDE makes this as hard as possible for some reason. This post shows you how to find them and also how to make Arduino put them in an easier place to find in future.
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Kanda have been supplying PIC, serial EEPROM, ST7, COP8 and AVR portable programmers for many years and are always extending the range. They vary from simple units in a keyfob case to larger hand held units with storage for one or more programs up to a portable programmer with LCD and keypad that will store 32 programs.
AVRDude is free open source software for programming AVR devices. It is command line based but can be run from a batch or make file. It is the main programming utility used by Arduino software when the target board does not have a bootloader.
Kanda have been making the STK200 starter kit for 15 years and it is still proving to be very popular. It was originally designed for Atmel and was the first low cost microcontroller training kit on the market and helped launch the AVR as a popular microcontroller.
Atmel have since moved on to STK500 and STK600 as the AVR portfolio has expanded but the original kit has many advantages, especially for beginners. Arduino has also entered the market but this serves a different purpose and won’t actually teach you much about microcontrollers.
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