Nero's Blog: How to Program/burn/flash a AVR microcontroller(Step by step tutorial)

Here we go.....
Things required

Atmel AVR Studio
USBasp(Its about 230Rs in India (2$ in US i think)[Search for "usbasp" on ebay if you don't have one]
AVR Burn-O-Mat(This requires Java)
WinAVR
And of course,the micro to be programmed!

Step 1:

Download and install the Atmel AVR Studio

I had already installed it so.....this showed up

I won't bother uninstalling and reinstalling. I assume everyone is familiar with installing windows program(even a baby can do it,its that simple). The installation takes a few minutes so be patient.

Step 2:

Once you've finished installing AVR Studio. The next thing to do is to download and install

WinAVR. I haven't installed it yet so I'll be able to show you the process!

Install the program by clicking Next,I Agree and Install

After the installation completes,click Finish to exit installer.

Step 3:

Download and install AVR Burn-O-Mat

Tick "Launch AVR Burn-O-Mat" and click "Finish". If the program launches,it means you already have Java installed(You can skip the Java installation). Others will the get the following message that I get since we don't have Java installed.

Press OK. Download and install Java.

Run the file.

Let the download complete.

UNTICK the sqaure box.

Click next and the installation begins.

This completes step 2.

Step 3:

Buy a USBasb programmer(It's really inexpensive considering the price of Arduino boards)

Connect it to the computer. Now we'll have to install the driver for it. Download the drivers from here.

This is how to install them...

Extract the zip file

Go to My Computer(Windows XP/Vista/7)/This PC(Windows 8.1/10)

Right Click and Properties

Go to Device Manager

In Other Devices > USBasp
Right Click and select Update Driver Software

Select Browse my computer for driver software

Enter the extracted folder path.

Click Install this driver software anyway.

You're done with configuring of USBasp. Yay!!

Step 4: Configuring AVR Burn-O-Mat

Go to C Drive and rename "WinAVR-20100110" to "WinAVR".

Next run AVR Burn-O-Mat.

Select USBasb from the list,apply and ok and you're done with configuring everything. Now you can program a AVR micro.

Step 5: Finally connecting the micro and writing a blinking LED program

Follows the diagram for the connections.

After doing the connections on a breadboard this is how it looks

OK. Now the connections are done

Now lets write the program.

Start AVR Studio.

And this come up. Allow internet access to AVR Studio by ticking both the boxes.

Click New Project and it will start making the Project file.

You can either make a C/C++ or Assembler Project. Here I'm going with Assembler.

Give the project any name you like. In my case, I named it "Firstone".

Select the micro that you are programming in my case Atmega8.

This is assembly code to blink a LED at 1.9 Hz(You'll have to read the device datasheet to understand the code) The Assembly language is micro dependent. So the above code cannot be used with micro other than Atmega8.

Here's the C code with is micro independent(not in all cases though). Since I'm using the internal timer2 to generate the blinking, this C code will only work with micros that have timer2.