Chip programmer with a twist

I am working on 1000 projects all the time.  You may already know that of me.  This one will be a fun adventure.  I’ve started by shrimping.it this is a site where they show you how to build a bare-bones Arduino.  I went and ordered the part for 4 kits via the electronics seller http://www.taydaelectronics.com/ it was under $30 for all the parts I needed.  I did not get boards as I plan to design my own at a later phase.   Here’s the shrimp built with an 8 pin chip holder where it can be used to program the little chip.  This is an Atmel ATTiny 85 ready to be programmed.

Now the hard part.  Let’s say I want to program a lot of these little chips.  Wouldn’t it be nice if the Arduino held in memory all the code and capabilities to program the chip without an attached USB link to a computer?  That’s goal #2.

Here is an ATTiny 85 running code that was pushed through the Arduino in the traditional manner (Goal #1).  What I like about the Tiny line of chips is there is little to no supporting hardware required to have them run.  This makes them a lot of fun for all kinds of little builds.  They will even run off three or 4 AAA batteries and for quite some time.