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OffTopic > AVR programmer

#103619 - jake2431 - Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:04 am

Hey, can anyone help me out. I need a parts list for this and am having trouble figuring out what all I need. http://www.avr-asm-tutorial.net/avr_en/beginner/index.html . The AT90S2313 has been replaced by a new "tiny" microcontroller and I found the replacement, but the DCF77-clock I can't find. I don't know if that is the parts number or not. I have a basic understanding of schematics(as in if I know the parts I can figure out where they go), but I don't even see that round thing in the back of the picture in the "Programmer for the PC-Parallel-Port" section on the scematic. I guess these are two different ways that you can program an AVR. In that case I just need the parts for the bottom one. I just want to make my own development board and to know how they work so that I can make them for different microcontrollers. So what I am asking if for a parts list for the experimental board and how you figured it out. Thanks.

#104050 - phonymike - Tue Sep 26, 2006 5:05 am

hell I just started programming this thing like a few weeks ago. been looking at atmel mc's and they're kickass. had an old card reader, it was based off the at90s2313. so I got a programmer like the one you mention off ebay, $10 shipped. got it and a long cable, doesn't work for shit. no matter what I tried wouldn't work. seems the voltages were all over the place. so I spent $70 and got this baby. sure the ones you make are cool, especially if you can make them for cheap, but I had no luck with it, plus my laptop doesn't have a parallel port, so usb allows me to program with it.

the cable length does matter to. the long cable I got with the ebay one is like a foot long, and I get constant errors using it with my usb programmer. so simply bring the programmer to the top of the desk and using the short ass 10 pin cable it came with works every time. also you'll really just need a 5 volt regulator and a crystal. sadly the crystal from an old snes doesn't work.

http://www.futurlec.com/ATDevBoard.shtml

$20 gets you a pre-made board, with the mc and crystal, voltage regulator and shit, plus the cable. that same website sells the at90s2313 if you need one of those to. I was looking at the tiny26 (has digital to analog converters and stuff) or one of the mega ones, they have more ram (kilobytes instead of 128 bytes.)

#104087 - jake2431 - Tue Sep 26, 2006 2:07 pm

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, these mc's are awesome. If I buy a programmer how hard is it to make a dev board? Do you know a site that teaches this? The reason I ask, is because I want to eventually make a robot from scratch and I will need to know how to make my own boards.

#104814 - josath - Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:13 pm

Here's a page with various AVR dev boards:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php?cPath=2_10

Most of them also include schematics.

I have one of their dev boards, and a parallel port programmer from here:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php?cPath=1_7

And they work fine for me. I've been working on making a simple Pong game, just to get the hang of things. I haven't had much time for it recently, but I've got it to the point where I can display graphics on a small RedGreen 8x8 LED matrix. Check my website: http://blog.davr.org/category/avr/ (the second post has a video)

#104827 - jake2431 - Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:05 pm

Hey thanks that looks great.

#104828 - jake2431 - Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:18 pm

Maybe I should have looked better on the site, but I was just wondering why you needed three micro controllers for the project? I figured one would be enough. For example: http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/game/vemk121.htm

#104831 - josath - Mon Oct 02, 2006 11:40 pm

Ah, it's not 3 microcontrollers:
It's 1 microcontroller, and 3 shift registers (think of them as Serial->Parallel converters. As seen in this partial schematic: http://davr.org/elec/schem1.png (the AVR is in upper left, the LED matrix is in upper right, the others are shift registers)

I only need to use 5 output pins on my AVR, in order to control 24 pins on the LED array (which due to the LEDs set in a matrix, lets me control 64 * 2 color LEDs)

However, there are some problems with that setup (it works, but some drawbacks). My future plan is slightly different, which will require 12 output pins, but will work much better. (I explain the issues / changes on the first post on my blog)

#104832 - jake2431 - Tue Oct 03, 2006 12:16 am

Oh, okay. Thanks. For some reason the top left corner of the schematic is slightly off screen on my computer. When I get more time(midterms are this week and next week) I will explore your sight better. Thanks for the help.

When I understand everything I want play with this: http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=569 but, alas, they are out of stock and because of the origin I am not sure if they will get anymore.