10pcs MH-Tiny ATTINY88 Micro Development Board 16Mhz /Digispark ATTINY85 Upgraded/Nano V3.0 ATmega328 Extended Compatible for Arduino IDE 1.0+ (OSX/Win/Linux)

To be honest, I could never make it work with the USB interface to the Arduino IDE, tried different drivers but never got it to work, the reason is obviously because the board comes with no boot loader, the frustrating part was trying to add one. Managed however to connect it using the ISP programming method, did use first an Arduino uno as ISP and then did use an USBASP interfase, both do work flawlessly and here is where i realized this ATTiny88 based board may not have the ability to support the boot loader with USB capabilities, that may discourage some people but all along it does offer all the resources for some fairly complex projects at a very low cost per board.

First to get the IDE setup, you have to point it to some random .Json file which one day could be made into a virus or simply stop working like the acorn oak digistump did. Secondly, the thing doesn't work. Press the upload button, it asks you to plug the device in but then it just stays there.Anyway, I tried lots of things to try and get it to work. I'm done. I'm going to buy something else unfortunately. I wasted time and money. This is not a microchip meant for use. It was meant to be made thinner using a hammer, which I will be doing tomorrow.

Ignore the negative reviews because all I'm hearing is people who don't know how to use the product. If you're used to working with the Attiny85 but get frustrated at the lack of GPIO pins, this is the product for you. With 26 GPIO pins and 8 ADC inputs, you don't need to mess about with shift registers to increase the usefulness of an ATTiny85. Because the board lacks a USB to UART chip it consumes less power - another distinct advantage over boards like the Arduino Nano. It uses a software USB bootloader from Digispark to emulate the typical USB chips on Arduino and ESP development boards. It took me ten minutes from unboxing to getting these hooked up to the Arduino IDE and they work like a charm. At just over $2 per board through Amazon, it's not worth ordering these from China just to save a few cents. A great buy.

I tried using these when I originally purchased them, but they didn't work as I expected. Since I was busy, I put them away until I was ready to return to them. When I did get them back out, it took me a little while to lean how to use them. First, I had to find the correct library/plugin for the Arduino IDE. Then, I had to figure out how to program them. Essentially, you plug them in after starting the upload...this is not as easy as the typical Arduino devices. For my project, I barely had enough memory space to control a button and an LED strip. In fact, I had to remove a lot of code just to make it for in the available memory footprint. I'm sure I'll eventually find a use for these, but I'm general, I'll stick with actual Nanos or similar devices.

UPDATE: Turns out that the ATTinyCore package by SpenceKonde "just works" on Apple Silicon, so the below procedure is unnecessarily overcomplicated. The only nitpick is that the micronucleus bootloader only connects over USB if the reset button on the board is pushed after "upload sketch" being clicked in the IDE.These are some great inexpensive development boards for small projects. I did have some trouble getting these to work, so I would like to briefly document my issue and workaround.The official MHEtLive package for the Arduino IDE was not working for me as the compiler toolchain would not run on my Apple Silicon (M2) laptop. The error message I got was "avr-g++: bad CPU type in executable." Suggestions to try running the Intel binary of the Arduino IDE using Rosetta also did not work.I assumed support for Apple Silicon would not be provided any time soon, so decided to try building binaries on my Raspberry Pi instead.First, I installed arduino-cli on my Raspberry Pi and tried installing the official MHEtLive core. Unfortunately the core did not specify a build of the micronucleus bootloader usable on my OS. I modified the package_mhetlive_index.json to omit the micronucleus binaries from the "tools" list to allow arduino-cli to install the mhetlive core. I then checked out the micronucleus repo and built my own binary. This way, it was possible to compile the binary for the mhetlive:avr:MHETtiny88 board using arduino-cli with the "-e" flag set to export the compiled binaries, then use the micronucleus binary I built to upload the binary to the development board.Ultimately I ended up installing ATTinyCore by SpenceKonde into the development environment on my Raspberry Pi and using its ATTinyCore:avr:attinyx8micr board as the build target instead. ATTinyCore looks to be much better maintained and documented than the MHEtLive core, and it has the facility to compile for many other targets (e.g. other ATTiny microcontrollers). The binaries built with this core specified are uploaded using micronucleus as well.I did need to install udev rules to allow micronucleus access to the Raspberry Pi's USB ports but that was simple--I just needed to download a rules file and follow some instructions included within.It is probably possible to work around most of this by programming via the ICSP pins instead of over USB.

From having to find files needed to program and bootload on github, to it not retaining programming sent via USB, this product is quite the mess. If it's going to need so much additional setup, you should be professional enough to include a link to it on the store page or info in your homepage. Other than that, it's capable of driving 2 LEDs from a usb-micro supply, so there's that.

I'm using Ubuntu for my desktop OS and I had to jump through some hoops to get these to work. I had to install the board in the arduino ide. I used the MH-ET live board driver but I had to update the micronucleus programmer to a newer version than what came with the board driver code. They need at least version 2.2 and the version I started with was 2.0. Not a bad process but it could be much better. T all in all, they are responsive and work well for what I needed.

Excellent for the price. Decent quality. Worth it.