AVR chips have been popular for a very long time due to their combination of low price, efficient instruction set, very low power consumption, and flexible peripherals. Before the sale to Microchip, Atmel had started releasing two new series of chips – the ATtiny 0- and 1-series. These low-power chips featured new peripherals and were a great upgrade path from smaller ATtiny chips. If you want to check out the ATtiny1616, a member of the 1-series, the ATtuno is a great choice.
The board comes with Wago connectors for extremely easy wiring of prototypes. Additionally, a 4×4 grid of WS2812 RGB LEDs is included, plus a Stemma QT/Qwiic compatible port for attaching all sorts of peripherals. Switches are included to change the power source between USB and the UPDI programming port, as well as change Vcc between 3.3 and 5V.
There’s also a slightly less expensive version that doesn’t come with the Wago headers; instead, you simply solder in normal 0.1″ headers, which have separate footprints on the board. Multiple LEDs show the status of various functions on the board, like which voltage is selected, whether the UPDI programming pin is being used, plus the classic UART TX/RX LEDs.
All you need to get started is a USB cable! It’s not a bad idea to get your hands on an MPLAB Snap or similar programmer that supports UPDI, as having full debug functionality can be very useful.
