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Using ATtiny microcontrollers with Arduino on Windows 11
It's 2025, and there's a lot of outdated docs on programming ATtiny microcontrollers (ATtiny85, ATtiny84, etc.) on Arduino. You CAN do this on Arduino IDE 2.x on Windows 11.
Arduino support
The core you want is ATTinyCore. To install it:
- This core can be installed using the boards manager. The boards manager URL is:
http://drazzy.com/package_drazzy.com_index.json - File→Preferences on a PC, or Arduino→Preferences on a Mac, enter the above URL in "Additional Boards Manager URLs"
- Tools → Boards → Boards Manager…, Select "ATTinyCore by Spence Konde" and click "Install".
Programming
You can program it several ways. Here's two:
- USBasp: A dirt cheap dedicated USB programmer. USBtinyISP wasn't tested, but likely works similarly.
- Arduino as ISP: Use an existing Arduino Uno, Nano, or similar as a programmer. I'm not gonna document this approach, but it googles easily.
Programming with USBasp
USBasp driver
To allow Windows 11 to support USBasp, you need to download Zadig, a tool that associates various open source USB Windows drivers with connected hardware. Hook up your USBasp, run Zadig, then set the driver to "libusbK", and hit "install driver".
(Note: In Windows 10, libusb-win32 was recommended, but this doesn't work in Windows 11.)
Hooking up to the chip
If the thing you're programming is a board with a standard 6- or 10-pin programming port, you can just hook it to the USBasp with an appropriate ribbon cable.
If the thing you're programming is a bare ATtiny chip (e.g. on a breadboard), then you should make a breakout cable out of some Dupont wire. You'll need to hook the following signals to your chip based on its pinout. The table below includes my recommended wire colors, plus a mnemonic to remember them.
| Signal | Color |
|---|---|
| VCC | Red (standard VCC color) |
| GND | Black (standard GND color) |
| RESET | White (reset = blank slate = white) |
| SCK | Yellow (socks, but old and nasty) |
| MISO | Green (miso soup can be green) |
| MOSI | Blue (hey that's a common color we haven't used yet) |
(Yeah the mnemonics are dumb/bad, but they work for me)
Initiating programming
In Arduino 2.x, they did a dumb thing, and made the upload button NOT respect the ATtinyCore's setting to use a separate programmer. So you'll need to go to Sketch menu and pick "Upload using programmer" (Ctrl+Shift+U). If all goes well, your chip should be programmed successfully.