With Teensy, Teensy++ and other USB Development Kits being sold out and probably backordered for weeks or even months, other companies/manufacturers are jumping on the bandwagon and releasing their own USB development kits. Team Xecuter (well known in the Xbox modding scene) has just announced that they are behind the Minimus AVR USB that will be released very soon.

Our factory has been commissioned to manufacture the Minimus AVR USB Dev Kit and we can confirm that we were able to use our contacts at Atmel to secure a large amount of stock now and in the near future for them.

Production began this week and we will be shipping to the Minimus guys this weekend.

The product is as high quality as you can expect from anything manufactured by Xecuter and naturally we helped to tweak the design a little to make sure it was spot on (Cleaned up schematic, added Power & Status LED's, made sure all 22 I/O lines were available, more durable RST/HWB buttons for bootloader access etc)

Product Details:


Presenting Minimus, a high quality production grade AVR USB Development Unit that is clean in design, low in cost and readily available to resellers around the globe. There are hundreds of projects available for the AVR USB hobbyist looking for a powerful yet cost effective solution. Works with Open Source LUFA USB firmware library and Open Source LibUSB software library.
  • ATMEL AT90USB162
  • 22 Programmable I/O Lines
  • 16Kbyte Flash
  • 512 Byte SRAM
  • 512 byte EEPROM
  • 16 MIPS Throughput
  • USB 2.0 High Speed
  • 16MHz Quartz Crystal Oscillator Circuit
  • 5V USB Powered
  • Power / Status LED's
  • Male USB Connector - No Cable Required
  • Access to all IO's
  • Easy Program / Update with Atmel FLIP (Flexible In-system Programmer)
  • Robust HW/Reset Buttons (Simple Once-Only Operation When Programming)
  • Full LUFA Compatability
  • Full LibUSB Compatability
  • Simple Plug n Play
  • Atmel FLIP Software Drivers: http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/to...p?tool_id=3886
  • Software Compatible With Windows 9x / Me / NT / 2000 / XP / Vista / 7 and Linux.

The Minimus AVR USB is powered by an Atmel AT90USB162 that is pre-programmed with the bootloader which allows code to be programmed inside the chip without any external programmer, just download the FLIP software from Atmel's web site and load your HEX code. To enter the bootloader mode you should simply press and hold HWB button, then press and release the RST button.

Get the Atmel FLIP software here: http://atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_...p?tool_id=3886 - these also include the Windows driver.

They even released a video of it in action:
As requested we tested to see if it would work with the "PSGroove" code on a PS3, and of course it works perfectly as it's based on the ATMEL design. However I should point out that this device can be used with thousands of USB projects but we won't allow any discussions on how to do any PS3 hacking here.

This product looks very nice. What makes it different from the Teensy's, Blackcat USB JTAG's and others is that it has a USB plug on it. No need for cables.

Source: Team Xecuter / Minimus AVR USB