These days, hackers have many choices of processors and development boards for their hardware projects. If you need something small and cheap and don’t require a ton of processing power, the ATtiny85 is a good choice, but for better or worse it comes as a chip with not much else on it. Although not exactly a fair comparison, something like an Arduino Uno can be easier to start with, since it has a programming port built in, and female headers for IO.
Well, now you can have the best of both worlds with this ATtiny development board kit, which includes an ATtiny chip. This board breaks out all the ATtiny85’s pins, and includes headers for power, like this coin cell breakout, also available from Bitkit.
One thing this board doesn’t include is a way to program these chips. For this, you’ll need to either make your own programmer, use a programmer like the Bitkit Little Wire Kit, or do something clever like using a full Arduino Uno board for the purpose.
Though you could cobble something together on your own to get started with the ATtiny, if you’d like a head start with the hardware, Bitkit has you covered!
