Newbie guidance request

[tismon]

I love learning about electronics and fixing/modifying things as much as I can. I don't have much reason to do this sort of thing for work, but it does come up once in a while as part of my more random duties.
So once I got wind of AVRs, Arduinos, USBtinyISP, etc, and saw some of the projects that have come out of playing with them, I had to start learning.

I'd like to start off slow and work on something easy until I'm familiar with the process. This tiny music player seems like a good fit since the program has already been written and won't force me to remember any C just yet.

Basically, I could probably use some help in making sure I'm on the right track in getting this done. I do have an idea on how to use this as part of a gift, but for now, I'll just worry about getting it to work.

List:
A few ATtiny85s in case I mess up
Header board-this one from Lars Schumann might save me some time
Programmer-USBtinyISP-Can this handle HVSP? Poor wording. I realize.
MicroSD module
I can't quite figure out what capacitors and resistors he used from the image or diagrams. If anyone could help with that, I would appreciate it.
I'm also not sure what board to use as I've not seen one like he used.

Thank you in advance for any help.

[adafruit_support_mike]

The resistors are 4700 ohms. The capacitors are 100 microfarads.

It's fairly common to group component values in ranges of 0-999, thousands, millions, billions etc. We associate letters with those ranges, usually the first letter of the standard prefix ('k' for kilohms, 'M' for megohms, etc), and sometimes an extra letter for the 1-999 range. For resistors, it's usually 'R' or 'E'. Then we put the range letter where the decimal point would go.

So.. the labels and values for a range of resistors would be: 4R7 (4.7 ohms), 47R (47 ohms), 470R (470 ohms), 4k7 (4700 ohms), 47k (47000 ohms), 470k (470000 ohms), 4M7 (4700000 ohms), etc. Resistors larger than 100M or smaller than 1R are used for special purposes, so you won't see them often.

Capacitor labels work roughly the same way, but we use the small ranges. 1 Farad of capacitance is pretty large (it can supply an amp of current for a second), so the components you usually find fall in the millionth (microfarad), billionth (nanofarad), and trillionth (picofarad) range. The official symbol for the 'micro-' prefix is the greek letter mu, but since that isn't a standard ASCII character, you'll often see 'u' used instead. '100u' means '100 microfarads'.

[adafruit_support_mike]

The PCB is called 'stripboard' BTW. It's just copper-clad fiberglass with the copper etched into strips (hence the name). Stripboard with holes in it is called 'veroboard'. Both are fairly common prototyping tools.

Since you have one of Lars's header boards for the ATTiny, you can probably build the circuit in a breadboard. If you don't have one of those, it's a good investment. Adafruit has several sizes, or you can get them at Radio Shack.

Lars's header is probably overkill for this particular project, but will be handy for further circuit development in the breadboard.

WRT the programmer, 'HVSP' is short for 'High Voltage Serial Programming'. Broadly speaking, there are two ways to program the ATTiny: low voltage mode (3v-5v), where you more or less talk with the chip, and high voltage mode (12v), where you slap it upside the head. High voltage mode does certain things low voltage mode doesn't, like changing the way certain pins are used. In this case, setting the RSTDISBL (reset disable) flag tells the chip to use its RST pin as an output rather than an input.

The USBTinyISP doesn't do high voltage mode by default, but you can play with the jumpers to give it an external power supply. I don't remember whether the chips in the programmer itself can handle 12v, but trying it would be fairly advanced for a first circuit, so I'd suggest doing the mono version to start with.