During the upgrade of my Arduino, I used the mySmartUSB programmer – initially on my Windows box, but since it’s USB and it mimics the AVR910 protocol, you can use it with avrdude on your Mac. Here’s how.

Note: This currently only works for PowerPC-based Macs. Silicon Laboratories is not able to get a Intel Mac driver out – see http://www.surveyor.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1161916754/4

First of all, you need to install the USB driver for the chipset used in the programmer – it’s a CP2102 from Silicon Laboratories. You can download a driver from chip45. So go ahead and download it. Once it is installed, plug in the programmer. A file

/dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART

shows up – this is the USB-to-UART device that you can use with avrdude.I installed the latter using Macports, if you install it from another source, please make sure it is at least v5.3 – older versions do AFAIK not support the ATMega168.

By default, the avrdude.conf does not contain the right device code for the AVR910 protocol. Open /opt/local/etc/avrdude.conf and make sure the following line is in the ATMega168 definition:

avr910_devcode = 0x06;

When everything is set, you can use the command

avrdude -p m168 -P /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART -c avr910 -t -u

to get to avrdude’s terminal mode – you can use e.g. ‘sig’ to print the signature of your ATMega chip.

You can buy the mySmartUSB programmer from myAVR – currently, it costs EUR 28,-.

I just upgraded by little Arduino to the ATMega168 – and basically doubled the memory. But, be warned: This is not a hassle-free procedure if you have not some experience with microcontrollers.

I bought a cheap serial programmer – only to figure out that the firmware is outdated and the ATMega168 is not supported. You can update the firmware – but you need another programmer for this *grmp*. So I bought a not-so-cheap mySmartUSB which runs over USB (so there is a chance it will work on the mac, I already found a driver for the USB chipset – stay tuned.)

Today, most programmers come with a 10-pin header (aka Kanda connector), but the Arduino uses the old 6-pin ICSP header. I soldered a converter to solve this. Once I succeeded with the electrical connection, I failed in using avrdude – programming went fine, but I wasn’t able to set the fuse bits. Finally, I have found AvrOspII which worked perfectly on my Windows box. Please read Wolf Paulus’ description to save yourself a lot of time (and broken ATMegas) – he has written a great article about the fuse settings.

If you’re interested in a pre-flashed Arduino, send me an email.

PS: picture CC’ed by opk on flickr.