If you are an AVR fan, you must be familiar with most of Atmel’s AVR development  tools: STK500, AVR Studio, AVRISP, AVR TJAGICE, AVR JTAGICE mkII, AVRISP mkII, STK600, etc. But there is one Atmel AVR development tool that provides ISP programming, High Voltage Programming, and debugging which comes in small form, beautiful box, and cheap price. 

The development tool that I am talking about is the AVR Dragon.

AVR Dragon is highlighting In-System-Programming, High Voltage Serial and Parallel Programming, JTAG, and debugWire. You can almost do all kinds of programming and debugging methods with those features. Aside from that, the PC communication and power is provided by USB. It is fully supported by the free AVR Studio IDE which makes developing AVR projects very fast.

Using the AVR Dragon requires some hardware setup first. Each target AVR MCU must be connected to the proper header pins provided with the board. However, the user must provide and solder the other remaining header pins to fully use it. Also, one major drawback of the AVR dragon is that it does not come with wire connectors and USB cable.

All in all, I am a very satisfied user of AVR Dragon and it saved me from a lot of hassles. For a retail price of USD49, it gives me the comfort that i deserve when it comes to developing projects using my favorite AVR microcontrollers.