ISP Shield Kit, version 2.0

ISP Shield 2.0

Earlier this spring, we released our open-source ISP Shield for Arduino. After using them for a while, we’ve found a few ways to improve the design, so today we’re releasing version 2.0.

ISP Shield 2.0

The ISP Shield is an Arduino “shield” (daughtercard) that makes it easier to use your Arduino as an AVR ISP programmer. It can be used to burn bootloaders onto new AVR chips, from directly within the Arduino programming environment, either in the on-board ZIF socket or on an external target board. More generally, it can also be used as a general-purpose AVR ISP programmer, using avrdude with the programmer type specified as “avrisp.”

ISP Shield 2.0

One of the tricky things about using the ISP shield is that there is a known incompatibility between Arduino-as-ISP and Arduino boards that have auto-reset capability. Version 2.0 of our ISP shield design fixes this, by adding the ability to temporarily disable auto-reset on the Arduino. Auto-reset override is an optional, jumper-selected feature that can be turned on and off.

(The other jumper shown above allows you to select whether or not the ISP shield provides 5V power over the ISP interface, a handy feature for programming chips on simple target boards.)

ISP Shield 2.0
The ISP Shield 2.0 is also our first printed circuit board to feature the OSHW logo— the first of many, we hope. :)

The ISP shield kit is available at Evil Mad Science, and complete documentation is available at the Evil Mad Science Wiki.

3 thoughts on “ISP Shield Kit, version 2.0

    1. I have to second that. So many boards simply number the jumpers something like "JP2". They certainly don’t spell out what the jumper is, much less what the different states are. Good job.

  1. Add HVSP ability.

    Minimal approach: Input header for a 12vdc supply and a simple transistor switch.

    More complete approach: Generate the 12vdc from the available 5vdc, regulate it and feed the HVSP transistor.

    There are already available simple HVSP arduino shields whose design could be integrated into your ver.3 shield. Currently they only support a simple fuse-reset option to recover fuse programming errors.

    Once the hw is available, then full HVSP becomes a software problem. But even the sole ability to recover from a miss-programmed fuse and then reprogram using ISP is a big improvement.

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