Electronics Circuits and Projects for Engineering Students and beginners

Look at the below picture. The programmer I am using is bought from another manufacturer, not from extremeelectronics. It is an USB Porgrammer. You can get it from any leading electronics hobby electronics store. My programmer is not pin compatible with XboardMini which I brought from extremeelectronics. I modified the ISP connector for connecting the USB programmer with the board. The XboardMini does not has Vcc connection in its ISP connector. My programmer has Vcc connection in its ISP connection. 10th pin is free (not connected) in the Xboardmini ISP circuit. I modified my cable such that 9th pin gets Vcc from USB programmer.

The red wire I connected goes from 10th pin to one of its Vcc node. In this way, the board directly gets Vcc from USB power supply. You dont have to use 9V adaptor for programming and powering the board.

I dont know whether the usb programmer from extremeelectronics is having Vcc connection in its ISP Port. Just find an empty pin in the ISP connector in programmer and Development board. Connect that pin to Vcc of the USB port. Just do the same thing in the development board also. Connect the Vcc pin of ISP port to Vcc rail in the board. using this setup, I am able to carry the development board and programmer in my laptop. I dont have to carry a 9v adaptor as finding power sources is not so easy for me as I am always in move. I am happy with my Acer Mini as I am getting a backup of 7hrs! Thanks to Intel for creating such low power processors!

The board below is an ATmega8 project demo board. I also had same problem of connecting the board to power supply for programming and running the board. The programmer is pin compatible with the board but the demo board has no Vcc connection in the ISP port. I found the Vcc pin in the ISP port and connected to 5v terminals of the demo board. So, i dont have to use adaptor again!
Even I test the peripherals using the Vcc and Gnd ports from demo boards only!

This is a ATmega16/32 development board. It also has the same problem. I did the same thing to this board also. This board has 4 LEDs for code verification. The idea of using PORTC in "remote control project using Atmega8" came from this only. I checked the status using these LEDs!

LCD Connections : 


Look at the below figure. When ever it comes to LCD, you have to take out a small PCB and prepare it for interfacing. I know it is a tedious job. I had modified the LCD module like this. With this module, you can directly connect the LCD to your demo boards as shown in the next figure. It is very easy to use and portable.