Cheap AVR programmers, are they any good ?

[mrflibble]

Yes, that will work as far as programming is concerned.
To do debugging as well, you need this: http://uk.farnell.com/atmel/atjtagice2/development-kit-debug-tool/dp/9171100

£230.27? holy cow of marry!

Get an AVR Dragon, it is not as robust, but you can debug and program with it and it costs much less.

Woah! That ATJTAGICE2 price point is from the same millenium as 5 Volt logic. @_@ You can buy entire bench DMMs for that. And then have spare change for a dev board from this century that includes onboard programming & debug.

Nice of them to still keep it in stock though, by way of contrast...

[Kremmen]

While Dragon does many of the same things as the JTAGICE, compared to the latter, Dragon is a toy. Bare board, easy to kill, gets confused regularly. Sure if you have the time and inclination to mess with such, feel free. The JTAGICE may appear expensive to those who have more time in their hands and less reuirements for results, but the price difference does not amount to that many hours of troubleshooting the toy.
All in all, the JTAGICE is quite reasonably priced for professional use, not excluding serious hobbyists.
The JTAGICE, same as 5V devices, is not going anywhere in a hurry, whatever your personal opinion may be.

[ee851]

Ken,
Thanks for the heads-up on the Atmel AVR 5.x IDE.

Kremmen,
Good to know the AVR compilers are derived from gcc and g++ !

[svofski]

I program AVRs with PICkit2 :D

[Alana]

Interesting... any details? Me got my hands on pickit2.

[svofski]

One way would be to do it like so:
http://www.avrfreaks.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=103853

But there is another way, take a look here (it's in Russian but maybe google translate can help. Ask me if you need some translation details)
http://elena-march.narod.ru/

It's a firmware that makes PICkit2 present itself to the host as AVRISP-mkII. It worked well for me.

[Alana]

Tank you, i think google translate is enough for this one.

[ScienceProg]

Well I still use DIY AVR programmers. In early days I have build several of them and they still work fine.
First was simple serial port programmer that worked with ponyprog. Then followed parallel buffered port cable.
Then JTAGICE clone, USBasp, STK500V2.
Lately I try to use bootloaders if possible.
If you don't do mass flashing, cheap solution or DIY is enough IMHO.