ATtiny Candle

What is it?

ATtiny Candle is a small development kit that is based on Microchip ATtiny85 and ATtiny13 MCU.

ATtiny85 boards are based on Micronucleos bootloader, that allows USB communication for both flashing and user code communication. It is fully compatible with Digispark Digistump board and works seamlessly with Digistump Arduino and Digistump Examples.

ATtiny13 board in turn requires bare-chip code and external programmer, in general much more demanding, since it has a fraction of ATtiny85's resources.

Why did I make it?

This project was inspired by IKEA LED candles. I was thinking how would you do one at home, and why would it be better than original, apart for being handmade obviously. A had a fistful of ATtiny13 chips that will do the job together with addressable LEDs. Clearly always better to have few LEDs instead of just one. And clearly it would be nice to power it from any power bank, which is practical in few ways - it kind of looks like candle if you use cylindrical 18650 based ones, also it saves you charging circuit, every power bank already has one. As the next step I re-did the same board with ATtiny85 power house and USB-connectivity, so it will work with micronucleos bootloader and will be flashable with no tools necessary (like Digispark boards).

What makes it special?

Board allows to create a landscape of visual products based on user input. It requires no additional tools to get started and with provided code samples can be jump started in minutes. When done coding - use it together with any power bank in the wild, no wires needed.

Main features

It has three flavors: T13 RGB, T85 RGB, T85 OLED

Sample Firmware

Board comes with firmware samples that allow to focus on your idea instead of fighting with missing dependencies and libraries.

Documentation

Product is open source and open hardware. All the information can be found on the github repo