AVRDUDE does not recognize USBasp device

avravrdudeusbasp

I'm am having issues with my USBasp programmer (Windows 10). I installed the WinUSB driver using zadig 2.4.

When I run AVR dude with the following parameters

avrdude -c USBasp -p m32u4 -u -U flash:w:justahex.ino.hex:i

It immediately returns with this error:

avrdude: error: could not find USB device with vid=0x16c0 pid=0x5dc vendor='www.fischl.de' product='USBasp'

It looks for a USB device with vendor ID "0x16c0" and product ID "0x5dc". This is the correct set of IDs according to Zadig:

enter image description here

Also the device manager seems to find the device without issues:

USB asp correctly installed

Again with correct vendor/product ID

When I google the topic I see a lot of forums where people have issues getting their USBasp device working under windows 10. But they mostly are having issues with the libusb /WinUSB drivers (Which seems to be fine in my case thanks to the Zadig tool).

So I find myself stuck in getting further. Are there any other things I can check? Or is the device broken somehow (which would surprise me as it does get installed properly in windows)

Best Answer

I'm a bit late to the game, but I just experienced the same error (albeit with different causes).

  • on most places on the internet you will be instructed to install the libusbK driver, which doesn't work, use the libusb-win32 variant instead
  • make sure the AVRDUDE.EXE tool is the latest version (the older doesn't work with the newer USB drivers for some reason)
  • in case of using a clone (for instance having "Van Ooijen's technische informatica" as vendor id instead of the original name "www.fischl.de"), make sure to use the -c usbasp-clone -P usb AVRDUDE settings instead of -c usbap -P usb. The clone setting causes AVRDUDE to ignore the vendor description and also accept the clone. You'd think having the correct VID, PID combination would be sufficient but no...

Bonus: for the extra lazy ones, here's an example command line that would flash that Arduino Leonardo board from Atmel studio (warning, this will overwrite the bootloader):

avrdude.exe -C"avrdude.conf" -p atmega32u4 -c usbasp-clone -P usb -U flash:w:"$(ProjectDir)Debug\$(TargetName).hex":i

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