The AVR DIP 40 Programmer is for Amtel AVR DIP40 micro controllers, such as the ATmega8535, ATmega16, ATmega32, ATmega164, ATmega324, ATmega644 and ATmega1284. This programmer is made as a shield for the Arduino Uno and designed to work in conjunction with the Arduino as ISP programmer sketch.

Many AVR programmers, such as Tiny AVR, are not compatible with the ATmega 1284's 128 Kbyte of program memory. To program these chips, you typically have to wire up a breadboard to an Arduino Uno to us the "Arduino as ISP" programming method to load the boot loader. This approach, while functional, was a bit cumbersome. The goal of this programmer is to make using AVR DIP40 microcontrollers easier with a simple Arduino Uno shield to replace the breadboard programmer approach. This shield can be used to load both a boot loader and a sketch onto a DIP40 AVR microcontrollers, though programming a sketch with this programmer will erase any boot loader already on the microcontroller.