Doswa

Start by following my instructions for setting up AVRDUDE 5.8 with FTDI bitbanging support.

Now open up avrdude.conf in a text editor. Add this entry by the other programmers:

# FTDI basic breakout
programmer
  id = "ftdi";
  desc = "FTDI Basic Breakout";
  type = ft245r;
  miso = 1; # RxD
  sck = 3; # CTS
  mosi = 0; # TxD
  reset = 4; # DTR
;

Now you can attach your FTDI Breakout to the target AVR like this:
FTDI -> MCU (ATmega168 PDIP pin)
DTR -> RESET (1)
RXI -> MISO (18)
TXO -> MOSI (17)
5V -> VCC (7 & 20)
CTS -> SCK (19)
GND -> GND (8 & 22)

With the 3×2 ISCP header on the Arduino, that would look like this:

        +----------------+
[RXI]--o| 1 MISO   +5V 2 |o--[5V]
[CTS]--o| 3 SCK   MOSI 4 |o--[TXO]
[DTR]--o| 5 RESET  GND 6 |o--[GND]
        +----------------+

Note that may need to supply the AVR with an external oscillator or clock source. For virgin ATmega168s, you won’t need to (because it initially uses the internal oscillator), but you’ll need an external crystal oscillator if you’re using one that came out of an Arduino.

From there you can use AVRDUDE like normal using the `-c ftdi` switch. For example, to read fuse bytes:

sudo ./avrdude -C avrdude.conf -c ftdi -p m168 -P ft0 -U hfuse:r:-:h -U lfuse:r:-:h -U efuse:r:-:h

Edit 2010-04-18:

I just found out that new AVRs need to have the clock rate adjusted before this will work. This is because AVRs come with the internal clock set to 1 MHz (actually, 8 MHz with the CKDIV8 fuse bit set) instead of the Arduino default 16 MHz. This can be done with AVRDUDE’s -B option. This option determines what clock is fed into the AVR’s SCK pin. I recommend starting with a value of -B 1 and working your way up to a reasonable clock speed. Here is the adjusted command for new AVRs:

sudo ./avrdude -C avrdude.conf -c ftdi -p m168 -P ft0 -U hfuse:r:-:h -U lfuse:r:-:h -U efuse:r:-:h -B 1

Description: This is an adaptation of the work by Kimio Kosaka, Nate Phillips, and Massimo. It allows you to use AVRDUDE with an FTDI chip (like the one on the Arduino boards or SparkFun’s FTDI Basic Breakout). This can be useful if you manage to brick your Arduino and you have no programmer.

—————————

If you’re on Ubuntu or Debian, install the prerequisites with:

sudo apt-get install patch build-essential libreadline-dev libncurses-dev libusb-dev
sudo apt-get build-dep avrdude avrdude-doc

—

Start by grabbing a copy of AVRDUDE 5.8, untarring it in the directory, and switching to that directory:

wget http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases-noredirect/avrdude/avrdude-5.8.tar.gz
tar xzf avrdude-5.8.tar.gz
cd avrdude-5.8

—

Now get a copy of the FTDI bitbang patch files:

for i in 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0; do wget -O patch-$i.diff http://savannah.nongnu.org/patch/download.php?file_id=1851$i; done

—

Apply the patches:

for file in patch-*.diff; do patch -p0 < $file; done

—

Also get a copy of the FTDI driver. For 32-bit:

wget http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/D2XX/Linux/libftd2xx0.4.16.tar.gz

For 64-bit:

wget http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/D2XX/Linux/libftd2xx0.4.16_x86_64.tar.gz

—

Extract the FTDI driver and copy over the needed files:

tar xzf libftd2xx*.tar.gz
cp libftd2xx*/static_lib/* .
cp libftd2xx*/*.h .
cp libftd2xx*/*.cfg .

—

Generate your makefile:

./configure

—

Open Makefile in a text editor and perform the following operations:

1. Find the line CFLAGS = -g -O2 and replace it with CFLAGS = -g -O2 -DHAVE_LIBUSB -DSUPPORT_FT245R.
2. Find the line LIBS = -lreadline -lncurses -ltermcap and replace it with LIBS = -lreadline -lncurses -ltermcap ./libftd2xx.a.0.4.16 -lrt.

—

Now to actually compile it:

make

—

From here, you can follow the instructions at http://www.geocities.jp/arduino_diecimila/bootloader/index_old_en.html starting at step 5. Note that you’ll need to modify the commands a little bit. Instead of:

avrdude -c diecimila -P ft0 -p m168

you should write:

sudo ./avrdude -C avrdude.conf -c duemilanove -P ft0 -p m168

(Note: you can still use it on a Diecimila, just specify the programmer as `-c duemilanove` and it should work.)

If you’d like to use SparkFun’s FTDI Basic Breakout as a programmer, try these instructions.