Tag Archives: Atmel

Atmel AVRISP mkII working in Virtualbox

In the past I have had problems getting the Atmel AVRISP mkII to work with Virtualbox.  This can be really irritating if, like me, you want to write code in Linux but are forced to run Windows for Skype and various closed-source development tools (ugh).

Today, it seems to be working.  I can talk to the AVRISP with avrdude and program devices.  Cool!

I’m not sure what I changed.  I’m using Virtualbox 3.2.10 r66523, running on a Windows 7 64-bit host.  The VM/client OS is Ubuntu 10.10.  I created a USB filter for the AVRISP in the Virtual Machine settings; it doesn’t seem to work without it.  That might be what I was missing before.

To avoid having to run avrdude with root priveledges, I created the file /etc/udev/rules.d/10-avrisp2.rules with the contents:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="03eb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="2104", GROUP="adm", MODE="0666"

Pretty simple.

Oh, I should add that there is no guarantee other combinations of host/client OS will work.   If you’re getting different results, leave a comment.

AVR HV Rescue Shield Out of Stock

This week I sold the last AVR HV Rescue Shield kit in stock! This is a significant milestone as it means I have finally sold off all of the kits from the original PCB fab run. At the time I wasn’t sure if anyone would actually buy such a thing, so pulling the trigger on what seemed like a huge number of boards was a leap of faith!

I want to thank everyone who bought kits and PCBs. Thank you for supporting me and the site!

Rather than reorder new boards of the existing design, I am taking this opportunity to re-evaluate my approach to a couple things, with the goal of reducing the BOM cost and lowering the overall cost of the kit.

The bad news is that this means there won’t be any more kits in stock in the short term. I’m planning to release a new PCB design within the next couple weeks, which means kits would be in stock within about a month. Because this is a busy time for me, I can’t promise specific dates, but I will do my best to keep the process moving because I know there are people waiting for the new kits.

If you need a kit right now, I believe Solarbotics still has some in stock.

Otherwise, stay tuned for updates.

And again, if you bought a kit, or even if you built the DIY version with spare parts and helped spread the word, thank you!

– Jeff

AVRISP mkII libusb drivers for Windows 7 / Vista x64

Continuing on the theme of my last post, here are libusb-win32 drivers for the Atmel AVRISP mkII. Unlike the Atmel-supplied drivers, these support avrdude, and as a bonus they will install on the 64-bit version of Windows 7 without digital signature errors. Yes!

avrispmkii_libusb-win32_1.2.1.0.zip

Note that if you want to use the AVRISP mkII with AVR Studio, these are not the drivers you are looking for. You want the ones Atmel provides (if you installed the libusb drivers by mistake, re-run the AVR Studio installer to revert back).