Seemanta’s Blog

If there is anything that is considered a rite of passage among embedded hobbyists then it undoubtedly has to be the creation of a robot. A robot is not only challenging from the point of view of an embedded system designed to perform a particular function, but it also has mechanical and structural facets to it which makes it even more difficult.

But please do not assume the robots we hobbyists build would be even remotely smart and glamorous like R2D2 from Starwars or the three-laws-bound R. Daneel Olivaw from Asimov’s novels. In stead, our robots are from a much more humble origin; most of us are satisfied with simple line followers and object avoiders. Speaking of which, let me introduce you to my first robot, which I have christened, LFR - Line Following Robot - but you may call him Loafer in affection.

As the name says, this robot is programmed to follow a painted line on any plane surface using a sensing contraption. For LFR, I have used an ATmega32 - an ideal choice primarily because of its on chip debug interface. An endeavour as ambitious as robot building definitely warrants a good debug features.

For my sensor array, I have used two LDRs or Light Dependent Resistors and an LED to act as the light source which is used to shine the path of the robot. The light reflected from either side of the line is then measured and compared to decide which direction to turn the robot. The turning is achieved by using a differential drive i.e. a drive which turns the wheels independently of each other. An LM339 is used as a comparator chip and a ULQ2804A chip is used as the motor driver chip

The below schematic diagrams show how steering of the robot is achieved by using the LDR-LED sensor array. The diagrams show the cases when the robot moves in a straight line, turns left and turns right respectively. This is based on the amount of light reflected off the black painted line.

After the schematic diagrams, now here I present some actual pictures of LFR. Alas! I do not have any videos of this one. One issue which I found with LFR was that the entire circuitry along with its batteries was a bit too heavy for my motors to drive. So it moved rather sluggishly. This is one improvement which I have in mind for LFR 2.0 ;-). And in case you are wondering, for the line, I pasted some black insulation tape on my marble white floor.

So without further ado, here are some snaps of LFR. The first one is a labelled picture for the curious.

If you are curious,  click here to see the ATmega32 C source code for LFR. As usual, with ATmega32, the code is extremely convenient. I used the avr-gcc toolchain to compile this and my own homemade JTAG debugger to debug my code. And yes, if you have seen the code then your guess is probably right, I have used PWM to control the speed of the motors here . Oh and probably you might have also noticed the JTAG debugger interface on the top right hand corner of the main robot board.,

So that was all about LFR - my first robot. It does not follow any of the three laws of Asimov, but yes it is nice to build your own robot, for fun as well as learning!

I hope you enjoyed this post. Stay tuned for more! Until the next time, g’bye and take care! And please do not forget to comment if you like this post.

admin Embedded Hobbyist, Tech ATMega32, AVR, avr-gcc, Embedded Hobbyist, Robotics

It has been quite some time (more than year) since I created my gnuProload software to program AT89S52 microcontrollers over Linux after reverse engineering an existing software which ran only on windows. But a few months ago, I enhanced that software to enable it to program even Dallas DS5000T microcontrollers.

If you want to know how gnuProload itself came into being, please read this post first. It is quite interesting, in case you are passionate about software in general and open source in particular. It tells the story of how I refused to walk into the trap of closed source software and how I was forced to reverse engineer a piece of software which ran only on windows (prior to my reverse engineering) ;-). In case you are wondering, the name of that post is derived from the critically acclaimed movie by Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove ;-).

Ok, let’s not digress. What happened was that sometime around August, this year, I was contacted by a fellow from Brazil who visits various universities giving lectures on embedded development on Linux etc. So he wanted to present my software in one of his talks. I was flattered, naturally :-). So I went ahead and created a set of slides for him to present it in his talks. In this post, I am just providing those same slides for you to go through. I hope these bunch of slides will give you more information rather than my original post about gnuProload.

So here it is, download and enjoy! Oh and by the way, you would need OpenOffice.org to view these slides. And if you are too lazy to download it, here is a PDF copy of it ;-).

Enjoy! As usual, don’t hesitate to put in your comments. Have a nice day!

~Seemanta

admin Embedded Hobbyist, My Creations, Tech 8051, AT89S52, DS5000, Embedded Hobbyist

Some time last year, I got myself  a few serial EEPROMs. As the name suggests, they are accessed serially using some serial protocol(usually SPI or I2C). Hence these serial  EEPROMs don’t have a parallel data/address bus that we normally associate with EEPROMs in general. Here is a photo of my SPI based EEPROM, a 25AA256 from Microchip.

Memory is written to and read from the EEPROM using a serial protocol, which may be SPI or I2C. I already wrote a post back then when I interfaced a SPI based serial EEPROM with my arduino board. This time, I have interfaced that same SPI based serial EEPROM(the microchip 25AA256 to be precise) with my Dallas DS-5000T microcontroller development board which has a DS5000T in it and that is basically a variant of the classic 8051 core. But alas! the DS-5000T does not support hardware SPI!! Hardware SPI means that you don’t have to implement the SPI protocol in software and by just setting up a few registers you can simply copy the byte in the output register and the microcontroller takes care of encoding each bit within that byte and sending it across the SPI bus. So that means that I had more work to do. I had to in fact implement the SPI bus protocol in software, which is also known by the term bit-banging. But before we discuss further let us look at how an SPI bus looks like:

As you can see, SPI works on a master-slave paradigm. The master is the one which initiates all data transfers. There can be several slaves on the same bus and the master has to select the slave it wants to communicate with by asserting the chip select line(also called slave select or SS line) of that slave. Here, SCLK stands for slave clock. The master has to supply the slave with clock pulses for it to work. MOSI means master out-slave in and MISO means master in-slave out. The former is used to transmit data from the master to the slave and the latter is used to receive data from the slave into the master. SS means slave select as indicated earlier. The slave would be active only when SS is asserted by the master by pulling it low.(It is asserted by pulling it low since SS is active low, indicated by the bar on top).

For more details about SPI, you can take a look at this Wikipedia link. The way my system is designed is that my DS5000T board acts my master which issues the EEPROM read/write commands. And the EEPROM itself acts as a slave. In order to communicate with the DS5000T, I use the PC serial port. The software that runs on my DS5000T, I call SEAShell -  or Serial EEPROM Access Shell. It is a shell in the sense that it allows you to read/write a particular byte within the EEPROM. Although I have not created a file system of sorts within my EEPROM, but that is an eventual goal. It would be really cool to have my own seemFS or Serial EEPROM Embedded Micro File-System. (I must add, I continue to impress myself with my cool names ).

So here is how my SEAShell setup looks like:

The circuit schematic of the connections between the DS5000T and the serial EEPROM is also very simple for this setup. It is so simple that I am not going to bother creating another drawing for it. The connections between the DS5000T and the 8 pin 25AA256 Serial EEPROM can be done as follows:

a) Pin 2.0 of  DS5000T –> Pin 1 of 25AA256 (/CS)

b) Pin 2.1 of DS5000T –> Pin 2 of 25AA256 (SO)

c) Pin 2.2 of DS5000T –> Pin 3 of 25AA256(/WP)

d) Pin 2.3 of DS5000T –> Pin 7 of 25AA256(/HOLD)

e) Pin 2.4 of DS5000T –> Pin 6 of 25AA256(SCK)

f) Pin 2.5 of DS5000T –> Pin 5 of 25AA256(SI)

g) Pin 4 of 25AA256 should be grounded.

h) Pin 8 of 25AA256 should be raised to VCC, +5 volts DC.

For more details about the 25AA256, you may refer to its official datasheet here.

The connection between the PC and the DS5000T board, of course uses the MAX232A level shifter(since RS232 voltage levels are not TTL compatible) and a few 10 uf capacitors. That is a standard connection and a bit of google can tell you how to interface a MAX232 IC with a serial port.

On the software side, I have written two programs for this:

a) SEAShell.asm  : An assembly language program for the 8051 that is burned into my DS5000T development board (using my very own gnuProload software, of course!). The job of this program is to provide an interface to the human user through the PC serial port to allow the human user to interactively (or in an automated way), read/write data into the Serial EEPROM. The source code for SEAShell.asm can be found here.

b) SEAShellUtil.c : A C language program that utilizes the automated mode of SEAShell.asm and can be used to read/write big files into the serial EEPROM. This is needed because we cannot expect a human user to type in several thousand bytes in case he/she wants to write them into the EEPROM. The source code for SEAShellUtil.c can be found here.

So my complete SEAShell setup comprises of the following  components:

a) The DS5000T development board. Note that any 8051 compatible microcontroller can be used because my SEAShell.asm uses only standard 8051 assembly language, no fancy 8051 variant specific things are used. Here I used my DS5000T because it was convenient for me. I could also have used my Atmel AT89S52 here.

b) The software consisting of SEAShell.asm and SEAShellUtil.c

c) The Serial EEPROM itself, which is a 25AA256. You can use any serial EEPROM which is based upon SPI. But you would have to modify the page size within the SEAShell.asm and SEAShellUtil.c code. Also find out whether the EEPROM accepts data MSB first or LSB first and then modify SEAShell.asm accordingly.

d) A simple serial port communication software like minicom (on Linux) or HyperTerminal(on Windows). Note that, SEAShellUtil.c would run only on Linux. However, you may try out the interactive mode of SEAShell.asm on any OS that has a serial port communication software(like minicom or HyperTerminal).

Here is a photo showing my hardware setup for SEAShell:

The EEPROM can be seen on the right hand side fitted in a small ZIF socket. My DS5000T board can be seen on the left. Still further to the left you can see the serial port DB9 connector which connects to the PC on the other end. Also above the serial port connector is the small USB connector that supplies power to the DS5000T development board directly from my PC.

And to clarify matters more, here is a screencast which shows SEAShell in action:

I hope you like this post about SEAShell. As usual, do write in your comments and suggestions. Your comments go a long way in inspiring me to create more such stuff !

Until next time, this is Seemanta saying good-bye to you all and take care!

admin Embedded Hobbyist, My Creations, Tech 8051, DS5000T, Embedded Hobbyist, Serial EEPROM, SPI

I started creating small embedded projects for fun about a year and a half back. Since then I have been hooked into it and today it takes the entirety of my free time. I started out with the humble 8051 and along the way have had the fortune of laying my eyes on the sexy Arduino, the powerful AVR and even the austere MSP430. A list of my embedded projects can be accessed here.

Here is a brief overview of the platforms that I own, as of this writing. By platform, I mean a hardware and software setup that allows me to write code in C or assembly, compile/assemble that code, ‘burn’ that binary into the target microcontroller and then possibly debug that ‘burned’ code.

1. AT89S52 development platform: This is the very first platform I ever owned. I purchased this from a company in Gujarat (a western province in India) called Sunrom. I am very satisfied with their product although a bit disappointed with the company for the lack of Linux support for its flashing software. I chose this as my first platform since I was most familiar with the architecture of the ATMEL AT89S52. AT89S52 has a 8-bit CISC architecture.

Type: Purchased
Approximate cost:  2250 INR (2006)
On Chip Debug support: No
Linux support: No. But I created a ‘reverse-engineered’  linux port for its flashing software. Look here.
Cons: Lack of Linux support from Sunrom and on chip debug.
Pros: Availability of some very good development tools like SDCC, ASEM51 etc.
My Comments: Best system to start embedded development at a minimum cost. Good value for money.
Overall Rating: 4.0/5

2. MSP430 EZ430-RF2500 USB development tool: I went to attend the MSP430 day conducted by Texas Instruments all over the globe and they gave this USB development tool as a free sample. This tool can be programmed via the IAR IDE that runs on windows through the PC USB. For the unitiatiated, MSP430 is a range of ultra low power microcontrollers from Texas Instruments. It has a 16-bit RISC architecture. Frankly speaking, I have never created any big project with the MSP430. Main reason being that for it to work, a separate 3.7 V power supply is needed for this ultra low power beast. Normal 5 volts that we use usually for other micros would fry it. But the circuit components would still need 3.7 volts. Thus, a kind of isolation would be needed to make sure that the 5V does not flow into the MSP430. This is one reason, I have never tried making anything with this platform. It just lies in my shelf, gathering dust till the moment of its beckoning comes.

A plus point however is that Texas Instruments have also created DIP version of this microcontroller which helps the hobbiyst who is occasional not well equipped to perform SMD soldering.

Type: Free Sample given by Texas Instruments for MSP430 day attendees.
Approximate cost: 40 USD, if I remember correctly.
On Chip Debug support: Yes
Linux support: GCC port of MSP430 seems to work in Linux, but have heard horror stories from people trying to make the USB tool which I have work in Linux. Problem is compounded by Texas Instruments not releasing the sources for the DLL needed to talk with the USB stick tool.
Cons: Lack of proper Linux support. IAR compiler does not work beyond 4k code size.
Pros: DIP version is hobbyist friendly and availability of MSP-GCC is a boon for those who cannot afford the IAR C compiler.
My Comments: Not recommended for newcomers.
Overall Rating: 2.5/5

3. Arduino: This tiny physical computing platform has taken the embedded hobby world by storm. There are thousands of websites all over the web with thousands of cool arduino projects. Arduino is easy to learn and easy to program. But while many people would recommend it for newcomers, I would really not do so. Arduino lets users program at a somewhat abstract level using its IDE which is based on processing. I firmly believe that someone should start with embedded development with the guts-first approach, i.e. learn the architecture from inside out and start programming in assembly language before graduating to high level languages like C or processing/wiring.

Type: Purchased
Approximate cost: 35 USD, back in 2008.
On Chip Debug support: No
Linux support: Yes. Arduino works out of the box with my laptop which has Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex.
Cons: Lack of on chip debug really makes creating complex stuff a pain in the butt.
Pros: Lots of sites on the web to start development.
My Comments: Not recommended for newcomers. But would readily recommend for experienced developers.
Overall Rating: 4.0/5

4. AVR ATmega: This is my latest acquisition in the world of embedded platforms. I hand made this myself after hours of backbreaking soldering sessions. But every minute of those sessions was wortwhile when I was able to use plain old GDB to perform hardware debugging of my target board. And did I mention, it works in windows too ? You just need to install win-avr and avr studio .

For the uninitiated, AVR is a RISC architecture from ATMEL and is wildly popular among hobbyists. The best thing about AVR is the availability of the completely free GNU tool chain for this arcthitecture which is why is it so much popular among students and hobbyists.

Type: Hand made
Approximate cost: 300 INR or 7.5 USD (Believe me !!)
On Chip Debug support: Yes.
Linux support: Yes. AVR ATmega is fully supported on Linux through AVaRice and the AVR port of the GNU toolchain.
Cons: Might be a bit daunting for the absolute noob to make this with bare hands, but then it can be also purchased from ATMEL but be ready to shell out in the range of 100 USD.
Pros: Very hacker friendly, and GNU/Linux friendly too. Works on windows along with win-avr and avr studio.
My Comments: Excellent  for newcomers. Also a great way to learn basics of soldering and embedded development.
Overall Rating: 4.5/5

So this completes my review. And no prizes for guessing who the winner is!. It is no doubt the AVR platform that steals the show. And why not? With its powerful on chip debug, 100% free GNU tool chain, GDB compatible software, Windows plus Linux compatibility, AVR really does steal the show.

That is all the time I have this time. Happy embedding!!
With this thought, I now take your leave and would see you all in my next post!

regards,
Seemanta

admin Embedded Hobbyist 8052, Arduino, AT89S52, ATmega, AVR, Embedded De, Embedded Hobbyist, MSP430

A few months ago, I got myself two DS5000T microcontrollers. DS5000T is a popular product from Maxim semiconductors. It is (yet) another microcontroller based on the 8051 core. However, it is much advanced than plain 8051s or even the very popular AT89S52 microcontroller.

A very special word of thanks to Maxim who made the free samples of DS5000T available to me free of cost. In the market they cost about 50 USD each. Without their support I would not have been able to make this project. So thank you, Maxim !

So here is how a DS5000T looks like:

The DS5000T is considered advanced because it has an in built serial bootloader within it as well as its entire RAM contents are backed up even when you do not connect power. This makes it one of the most expensive 8051 based microcontrollers out there today. Because of the serial bootloader, we do not need any specialized programming hardware to burn the microcontroller. All we need to do is connect the microcontroller to a PC serial port and then follow a particular protocol and then send the hex file we wish to burn in it using that particular protocol. The bootloader accepts the data stream through the serial port and performs in-application programming of the device, thereby programming our hex file in it. Oh and did I mention it has an inbuilt real time clock as well ?

When I got these DS5000Ts, I at once set out to create a sort of development board for it. I was lucky to come across this link which gave the complete schematic for just such a thing. So I went ahead and created my board. Here is a snap of it:

On the left hand side, you can see two connectors. The bigger grey one is the RS232 or the serial port connector. The other end of it goes directly to my laptop. Well, not exactly since I do not have a serial port on my laptop. It actually connects to the output of my USB-to-Serial converter.

The smaller white one is the USB which powers the development board. On the top there is a small slider switch which is used to switch the board from programming mode to run mode and vice versa. All these details would be explained in the forthcoming video.

The big black IC that you see at the center is the DS5000T. It is somewhat bigger because of the fact that the DS5000T is completely based on NV RAM which is maintained by a small in built battery. This battery maintains the program as well as data contents for as long as 10 years. So technically, this microcontroller does not have any flash ROM or EEPROM. It contains NV RAM only, all of it. The NV RAM can be partitioned and a part of it can be configured to act as program memory and the other as data memory (8051 has a Harvard architecture). There is a total of 32KB available on the DS5000T and so I can configure the entire 32KB as program without any data or a part of the 32 Kb as program and the remaining part as data. I can also potentially misconfigure it to have 0 Kb program and 32 Kb data. But then the microcontroller would not work at all !

Now comes the biggest problem: I had my development board but no software to burn it. Well, there was this utility from Maxim itself to load hex files into it using the serial bootloader but then it was windows based and did not run on Linux. Being a Linux fanatic, I set out to create a Linux port for that loading software.

Just then it dawned upon me that I could use my earlier ‘gnuProload’ and enhance it so that it could talk to a DS5000T microcontroller as well. In case you have not read my earlier story on ‘gnuProload’ I suggest you do so, primarily because it is a very interesting read and secondly, it would some give you some background about gnuProload itself.

So after a weekend hacking session I was ready with my new version of gnuProload, which I preferred to call version 2.1. I made considerable enhancements in this version. First there was this ‘preferences’ dialog where the user could choose various settings like serial port device, baud rate, microcontroller type etc.. Secondly, I fixed some other bugs and made the operation much more smoother than the previous version. Thirdly, gnuProload settings were now entirely driven from a user config file. Various settings could be changed by changing the config file which was parsed once when gnuProload started up.

I made a screencast to show a demo of gnuProload. It is followed by the actual LED blinking demo wherein you can see how a small assembly program that I have written blinks an LED. Do post in your comments if you like the video (Clink on the HD button in Youtube if you want a larger, better quality version of the video)

So, that was about me and my DS5000T. Here’s hoping I would create more exciting stuff with my DS5000Ts !

P.S. If you wondering how I created my screencast video then it is actually a combination of audacity, record-my-desktop, gnome-sound-recorder, ffmpeg and Windows Movie Maker. Phew!

P.P.S. Due to problems with the sound quality I was getting with record-mydesktop, I had to record the sound separately and then add it into the main screencast video. This is where audacity and ffmpeg came in handy. Maybe I shall write a small how to do this as well !

admin Embedded Hobbyist, Linux, My Creations, Tech

My sojourn of the AVR world is proving to be a worthwhile venture. I must admit architecture-wise, things are a bit more complicated on the AVR than on the stock 8051. However that initial learning curve is easily offset by the ease of using C as a programming language. And not to mention the euphoric sensation of using the gnu tool chain over Linux to create my stuff.

I thought the best way would be to learn each subsystem of the AVR ATMega32 in turn. So this week, I chose the Timer/Counter sub-system. And so here I am demonstrating Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) on the AVR which makes use of the underlying timer/counter system to generate a PWM output on one of its port pins.

I am not going to describe PWM here, as Wikipedia has a very good article on the same. Also, if you find the Wikipedia article mathematically daunting, you may read this alternative article here.

This demo is relatively simple and does not involve hours of soldering or anything. If there was anything that I had to devote time to, then it was the official ATMega32 datasheet. But it needs a lot of guts to even try to understand the terse(but correct) language of these datasheets. Something like legal-speak, every word has its own technical meaning and cannot be substituted by another word even if they are synonyms in the ‘normal’ english sense. So I spent about half a day getting familiar with the ins and outs of the AVR and finally sometime late in the night, I came up with this contraption for the demo.

Here is a small video of my demo. Do leave in your comments afterwards. And don’t forget to stay tuned for more upcoming AVR stuff !

seemanta Embedded Hobbyist, My Creations, Tech ATMega32, Motor, PWM, speed control

ATMega16 microcontroller: 160 Rupees.
Other Circuit components: 60 Rupees.
Solder wire:  15 Rupees.
AVR-GCC/AVR-GDB: Zero  (if you exclude the broadband cost of downloading)

The sense of satisfaction when I was finally able to debug AVR code on chip using my new homemade JTAG, over Linux: PRICELESS !!

Yes !! I was finally able to finish setting up my AVR development environment and let me tell you, the night I did it, I was not able to sleep due to excitement !

In my previous post, I had mentioned as to how I was able to come up with a minimal setup consisting of a programmer board and a general purpose development board for the Atmel AVR series of microcontrollers. Well, now that setup is complete, with the addition of a fully functional JTAG board. What this JTAG board allows me, is to examine my code execute at runtime on the actual hardware without incurring any execution overheads. It allows me to change variables at will, put breakpoints wherever I wish and inspect how my embedded program behaves. All these greatly increase my productivity as a programmer.

When I was working with the AT89S52 (an 8052 variant from Atmel) I did not have the luxury of on chip JTAG debugging and as a result I would spend hours trying to solve bugs which were very simple and would have got caught if I had some kind of on chip debugger. Solving bugs then was mainly by ‘thinking’ or by lighting up LEDs (in stead of ‘printf()’ statements that we use in our ‘normal’ programs for debugging).

The circuit schematics for this JTAG board are from the aquaticus ROV project site. And as usual I managed to take some photographs of this new JTAG board while I was constructing it.

And also, here is a short video of by JTAG board in action:

Hope you liked this post. Stay tuned for more posts as I embark on a new journey of exploring the AVR microcontroller !

seemanta Embedded Hobbyist, My Creations, Tech ATMega32, AVARICE, AVR, avr-gcc, gdb, ICE, JTAG

I am deeply attached to the 8051 microcontroller. In the truest sense, it has been my first love. It was the very first microcontroller which I was introduced to and then it was love at first sight. Even my undergraduate project work was based on the 8051 microcontroller. (Although sometime back I did purchase an Arduino board, which in fact has an Atmega16 microcontroller in it. But you know the thing with Arduino, the processing IDE abstracts out everything for you and I never really was HW-aware that I was working with an Atmega in the strictest sense. So in effect this particular project represents my true close encounter with the AVR series of microcontrollers).

So even when I started this hobby of creating embedded stuff for fun at home, it was my natural choice. I had my own development platform - both software and hardware for the 8051 and I enjoyed creating stuff using it. For an interesting story on how I got my development platform together for the 8051, take a look at this post.

Of late however, I decided it was time to see beyond the horizon of the 8051 microcontroller. So I decided to take upon a new beast. Two most popular choices were the PIC microcontroller and the Atmel AVR. After doing some research, I zeroed down on the AVR, chiefly for three reasons:

a) Most of the basic AVR micros had JTAG debugging. Till now the 8051 variant (AT89S52) I was using did not have any debugging facilities.

b) AVR packs in more MIPS for the same clock frequency compared to a PIC.

c) Freely downloadable and FULL version of the IDE for the AVR from its makers, Atmel. On the other hand the full version of the PIC development IDE from Microchip costs real money.

Besides, the AVR is much more advanced than the plain old 8051 which I am using currently. It has :

a) An in built 8 channel ADC. The AT89S52 has none.
b) An in built hardware SPI(Serial Perepheral Interface) and TWI(Two-Wire Interface). The AT89S52 has none.
c) An in built EEPROM to store program settings and persistent data. The AT89S52 has none.
d) An in built analog comparator. The AT89S52 has none.
e) An in built PWM generator to control DC motors and the like. The AT89S52 has none.
f) In built JTAG debugging, the MOST important factor for me. The AT89S52 has none.
g) The AVR RISC architecture has been designed ground up to be keeping in mind the C language. So very compact and high density code can be generated with the widely available avr-gcc C compiler. AT89S52, on the other hand was never designed to work with C, although there are compilers(both closed source and open source) which claim to generate efficient code.

Of course, there are about a zillion 8051 variants(SILABs, Analog Devices etc.) out there in the market today which boast of all these add on capabilities like ADC/SPI/USB connectivity etc. But I compared with only the plain vanilla 8051 (AT89S52) here, because that is the one I have used so far and also to level the playing field.

After an extensive research, I gathered the following list in order to realize a complete HW+SW development platform for my future AVR projects.

a) A programmer to ‘burn’ the hex files into my microcontroller : PonyProg(SW) + SIProg(HW).
b) A small ‘development’ board wherein I can prototype my creations before ‘deployment’ : ATMega32 Dev Board.
c) A compiler/assembler suite (possibly with an IDE) to create the software to run on the ATMega32.(AVRStudio, WinAVR)
d) A JTAG board to allow real time and in-system debugging of the microcontroller : Aquaticus JTAG Board .

It took about 2 days to create a) and b). As for c), I was able to very easily download them from the web. Currently, I am engaged in making d), the JTAG debugging board and once that is done, the setup for me development environment would be complete.

Oh, here are some pictures that I took yesterday of my first setup consisting of the programmer board and the development board. Please don’t mind the crudeness of my stuff. I am still to learn to make actual PCBs at home and so till then please adjust with the ugly-looking pre-drilled PCBs. I wrote a simple C program to blink an LED on and off to see if my setup was working properly.

So that’s about my first tryst with the AVR microcontroller. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much I enjoyed writing it.

I also do hope that my dear old 8051, does not get jealous and get me wrong. She is still my first love. AVR and I are just friends!

admin Embedded Hobbyist, My Creations, Tech ATMega32, AVR, Development Board, Embedded Hobbyist, PonyProg, Programmer Board, SIProg