Pigggy-prog project ideas

I've started working on a new project I'm calling piggy-prog.  The hardware requirements are cheap and simple - a Pro Mini and a breadboard.  The pro mini boards are cheaper than a USBasp (around 150c on Aliexpress), and by piggy-backing over a DIP AVR (like the ATtiny pictured above), no jumper wires or custom programming cable will be required.  The plan is to support the 8-pin tinies like the tiny13a and the tinyx5, and the 14-pin tiny84.

The piggy-prog should be a lot safer than socket-based programmers like the stk500, especially for the 8-pin parts like the tiny85. With the 8-pin AVRs, putting the chip in the wrong way around (rotated 180 degrees) results in reversing the polarity of the power - Vcc to Gnd and Gnd to Vcc:

By selectively powering the pins of the target chip with the low-current I/O pullup power from the Pro Mini, it is possible to probe and detect the target chip without any risk of damage to either the target chip or the pro mini.  Given the lack of a clamping diode on the reset pin going to Vcc, it is possible to detect which pin is reset, and therefore detect when the chip is rotated 180 degrees.

I'll use the stk500 protocol since it is supported by avrdude, and is the protocol used when "AVR ISP" is selected in the Arduino IDE programmers menu.  And since my picobootSTK500 bootloader implements a stripped down version of the stk500 protocol, I'll be able to leverage some of the code I've already written.

Proof of concept

To test the idea, I wired up an ATtiny85 on a breadboard with connections to piggyback a pro mini running ArduinoISP.

I modified the code to change LED_ERR from 8 to 2, since pin 8 connects to Gnd on the tiny85, and I changed LED_PMODE to 3.  I first tested the ArduinoISP code without the connection to the tiny85, but was always getting a "programmer not responding" error:

$ avrdude -C /etc/avrdude.conf -c avrisp -p t85 -P com16 -b 19200

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

After connecting an LED and resistor to pin9, I could see the LED heartbeat, but whenever I ran avrdude the heartbeat would stop (and another LED connected to LED_ERR would not light up).  This seems to be a bug in the ArduinoISP code, since when I plugged the pro mini into the breadboard on top of the tiny85 it worked fine:

$ avrdude -C /etc/avrdude.conf -c avrisp -p t85 -P com16 -b 19200

avrdude: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions

Reading | ################################################## | 100% 0.06s

avrdude: Device signature = 0x1e930b

avrdude: safemode: Fuses OK (E:FE, H:DF, L:E1)

avrdude done.  Thank you.

If I can find the but that is causing the ArduinoISP code to hang when there is no target, I'll probably build on that code rather than starting from scratch.