USBPrayog

Metaboard, We call it USBPrayog,  is a low cost alternative to popular Arduino UNO prototyping board. It provides most of the arduino functionality at a price that is 1/4th of Arduino UNO.

USBPrayog can be programmed over USB port directly without any need of external programming hardware. This page tells you how to get started with an USBPrayog board at very first time.

You require a A to B type USB cable to connect your USBPrayog board to your computer. If you do not want to supply power to your board from USB port itself you may need a 7-9V, 500mA Dc adapter too. At the end you surely need an USBPrayog board to experiment with. So once you arrange all the required items. Keep reading below…

The USBPrayog board can draw its power from either the USB port or through a DC Jack mounted on the board. However you have to choose the source of power to the circuitry on the board using a Jumper, as shown in the figure below, there is a 3 way jumper near 7805 voltage regulator IC. If you connect the jumper between pin 1 and 2 circuitry draws power from USB port and if you connect the jumper between pin 2 & 3 the circuit draws power from a DC adapter connected to the DC jack.

	Jumper position when giving Power over USB
	Jumper position when providing power through DC Jack

Each USBPrayog board comes loaded with a boot loader program that helps to program the flash of AVR device directly over USB. There is a jumper named 'upload' on the board. When this jumper is placed into its position between two berg sticks and you press the reset switch the AVR device enters into the boot loader program and the device expects some data over coming over USB that can be programmed to the flash. A step by step procedure for programming USBPrayog will illustrated in a minute.

USBPrayog can be programmed directly through avr-dude and all the other programa that uses avr-dude as a back end programming tools. So the USBPrayog orad can be programmed directly from WinAVR/Arduino/AVR Project IDE/eXtreamBurner/avr-dude etc. But before programming you have to install its drivers.

Linux already has drivers for USBPryog, However, Driver installation for USBPrayog under Windows is pretty easy.

1. Download the drivers here.
2. Once downloaded the driver zip archive, unzip it into some folder.
3. Connect the USBPrayog board to your laptop. A popup will come out saying USB device not recognized. Its time to install the drivers.
4. Goto Device Manager there you will see the unrecognized USB device. Just update the driver to that device by giving the path to the driver folder just downloaded by you.
5. Once the drivers are installed, now connect the USBPrayog to your PC using USB cable and press the reset button. Make sure that the upload jumper is onto its position. Now if you see in the device manager you will find USBPrayog as libusb-win32 devices. Your board is ready to be programmed.

As said earlier USBPrayog can be programmed directly from Arduino IDE. There are two ways to do so. Either you can choose to use the option Upload using Programmer or you can add the USBPrayog in the arduino hardware board list. Both the methods are explained here.

Since, USBPrayog in boot loader mode, presents itself to the host computer as an USBasp. So USBPrayog can be programmed just like you are using USBasp as an external programmer. Arduino IDE from 1.0.1 onward includes the facility to program the arduino compatible boards using external programmers like USBasp, USBTinyISP. Step by step procedure for programming USBPrayog using Arduino IDE is given below.

• Choose the board as Arduino NG or older with ATmega8 in the board menu.
• Put your USBPrayog into boot loader mode (as explained above in the programming section).
• Reset the board so that it presents itself as USBasp to the host. Check in the device manager if its done.
• Now Open Arduino IDE (version 1.0.1 or later)
• Write the sketch or open any example lets say blinky…
• You can customize the program to suit your need or you can use it as it is.
• Choose the programmer as 'USBasp' from “Tools→Programmer→USBasp” as shown in the figure below.
• From menu choose, “File→Upload using Programmer”, If everythign goes fine this command should load the program to the device flash. Once programming done the program will start executing. From next time onward when you reset the board, remember that the upload jumper should be off if you do not want to update the flash memory.

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