Summary

The best thing about at the ATtiny85 IC is undoubtedly its size, but this also makes it difficult to program. No matter how gently you pull it out of its socket, it still seems like the legs get bent (pro-tip: keep the IC in a socket if you are continually moving it to and from a programmer, then the socket takes the wear and tear).

To make our job even easier, we put together an ATtiny Programmer Shield, using a ZIF socket to ensure that the pins are not subject to excessive forces, and wired directly to the SPI pins on the Arduino so that any Arduino main board can be used. There's no reason a similar idea can't be applied to even an ATMega328 IC (using a 28 pin ZIF socket instead). We've added some testing LEDs to the pins that aren't used for programming, so you can quickly test that the chip is working too.