Fab Academy Week 5 - Electronics Production

Installing Firmware

The next few steps involved installing and running specific software on my computer from the command line. Fortunately the instructions worked exactly as they were supposed to and there were no hiccups.

To install the firmware, I had to connect a second device to my computer, which would in turn be connected to the Fab ISP. The device I used was a black box with a 6 pin connector called a “USBtiny programmer”. 

From there, it was just another series of steps involving typing various codes into the command line on my computer. This was supposed to allow a program called “make” to install firmware on the FabISP. Everything worked fine up unitl the last step, when I received an error message.

Well, it turns out my matching of colors and shapes didn’t serve me all the way through this project after all. Remember earlier when I mentioned the solder bridges? They are used to load the firmware, and then once the firmware is loaded, they are removed from the boards  Well, since all of the example boards are *finished* boards, they of course do not have the solder bridges on them anymore, which meant that when I replicated them in the apelike fashion that is my wont, the board I built did not have solder bridges. Which in turn meant that my board in its initial form could not be loaded with the firmware, which in its own turn lead to the error message I received.

So: FINE. I’ll READ.