On each Arduino-compatible chip runs a tiny program called the bootloader. The bootloader is a helper that reads your Arduino sketch over USB and burns it into the little microcontroller brain.

FLORA and GEMMA both come with bootloaders when your get them in the mail, but there are a few reasons you might want to know how to burn your own bootloader, besides the nerd cred. Maybe you’re an AVR hacker and you want to change the bootloader’s functions, or maybe you’re building your own circuit and need to flash a new blank chip. And sometimes it’s possible to corrupt your bootloader-- flashing it again can bring the board back to life.

Bootloading a standard Arduino Uno is easy-- it has an ISCP connector on board. But to connect to FLORA and GEMMA, we have to get a little more creative. Read on to learn how to bootload Adafruit's sewable microcontrollers.
You will need:

This guide was first published on Jul 08, 2014. It was last updated on Jul 08, 2014.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Jun 30, 2014.

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