Using the myAVR “mySmartUSB light” under Linux in the Arduino IDE

I recently bought a handful of Arduino Nano clones, just in order to learn that for a price of 4€ per CPU it is not granted that there is a bootloader on the ATmega328P. Hence I needed an “in-system-programmer” to be able to install the bootloader. I found the “mySmartUSB light” from myAVR at Conrad for a reasonable price.

The device works in principle on Linux with avrdude, given that you have a driver for the “CP210x USB to UART Bridge” already installed. To make it also work in the Arduino IDE, you just have to add the following lines to the file ~/.arduino15/packages/arduino/hardware/avr/<version>/programmers.txt:

mysmartusb.name=mySmartUSB light
mysmartusb.communication=serial
mysmartusb.protocol=stk500v2
mysmartusb.speed=115200
mysmartusb.program.extra_params=-b115200 -P{serial.port}

This adds a new entry to the “Programmer” submenu for the ISP device.