This is a short guide to explain how to program an AVR microcontroller (like what powers an Arduino Uno) directly from the GPIO pins on a Raspberry Pi. Why would you want to program an AVR from a Pi? If you’re building up an AVR-based board or product from scratch you’ll need some way to program code onto the chip. Typically dedicated tools like the USBtinyISP are used to program an AVR through its in-circuit serial programming (ISP or ICSP) pins, however with the latest version of the avrdude programming tool you can actually use Linux GPIO pins to program an AVR directly–no dedicated programmer required! This guide will walk you through how to install and use avrdude to program an AVR microchip or Arduino through its ISP pins with a Raspberry Pi.
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I take it that this can be applied to any breaduino that we make?
Yep, any bare AVR chip that supports ICSP programming and avrdude knows how to talk to should work. An ATmega328p on a breadboard is perfect.