Swapping out Atmel attiny13a

I’m looking to swap out the attiny13a controllers in my lights so they all have the guppydrv firmware instead of having every light with completely different mode groups. I plan to buy a handful of attiny13a’s from RMM pre-programmed and swap them out on all of my current drivers. I considered learning how to program them myself, but I can’t even begin to fathom everyone’s firmware codes, so this is my cheapest option.

1) Does it matter which way the pins are soldered into place? Obviously the chip can be mounted in two different ways, how do I tell which way it needs to be mounted on the driver? (Say this 17mm FET)

2) According to RMM’s website, there are different options for FET and 7135 based drivers. It says that the guppydrv (7135) Universal Firmware “REQUIRES 1uF CAPACITOR ON PIN 2/STAR 4.” How can I determine if my driver has one of these? I understand what the capacitor looks like, I just don’t know how to reference “pin2/Star 4” on a driver.

Thanks for the help guys! :beer:

I bought some chips too and eagerly await a response. Probably should have bought some caps. D’oh!

The attiny only goes down one way otherwise the pins would be completely off. There should be a silk screen dot or something marking pin one and there should be the same on the chip. Also there is indeed a cap. See crappy cellphone picture to see where it goes. Its on at the 12 oclock on the picture below. You can just make out the star under it.

The 1uf cap is indeed referring to an off-time cap. Most of MTN’s drivers have them, but would need to be added to Qlites or Nanjgs.

Also as was said, on the Attiny itself will be a indented or printed dot or triangle in one corner to denote Pin1. Most boards also have a dot to show where Pin1 goes, otherwise just pay attention to how the old Attiny is orientated.

Is the cap only for off time memory?

There are 2 caps on the common drivers we use around here, the 1uf is usually only used for memory, but I believe guppy requires it.

So if I mod a qlite with a guppy chip, do I need 2 caps?

The qlite already has the other cap, so you just need the 1uf cap.

Thanks a ton! A lot less confusing now!

I believe RMM uses an asterisk to show where Pin1 goes. If you look to the Components-PCB Mod Kits section you will see most drivers have an asterisk printed near one of the MCU pins.

Thanks for the help guys. I’m slowly converting my lights to FET drivers from RMM with the guppy firmware. Some of my lights I’ve already put FET drivers in don’t have the guppy firmware so I’m trying to “standardize” the firmware in them as cheap as possible. I’ll double check to make sure each has a cap, but I’m almost positive they all do.

Thanks again! :beer:

Do youself a favor and buy a programmer. It is really not that hard, see this guide for reference

So you don’t need to desolder the attinys and you can reuse the existing attinys.

Is Guppydrv available for d/load, or on-chip only?

No it is not available, but he should be able to copy it from one chip and load it on his other chips.