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AVR Microcontroller Class 2009

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Revision as of 22:07, 15 September 2008 by Hexagon5un (talk | contribs) (→‎Resources)

Syllabus, course material, homeworks, photos, etc from an Introduction to Microcontrollers with AVR chips class can be found here.

Also see (and contribute to) Useful AVR Links


Class 0: Introduction and Setup

What the AVRs are, what all the pins do, what they can do for you. Then the toolchain: soldering together the programmer kits, getting the software up and running.

Labs: building the kit and running a test LED flasher. (Almost all lab today, little talk.)

Resources:

Class 1: Outputs and Bit Math

How to make chips speak to the outside world, pin-by-pin. Enough C programming fundamentals to make it work. Pulse-width modulation.

Labs: Cylon eyes and dimming LED's. Extra credit: cross-fading cylon eyes!


Resources

Class 2: Inputs: Buttons and Analog-to-Digital conversion (ADC)

Gather data from the world.

Labs: pushbutton organ, light-dependent theremin. Extra credit: something else!


Class 3: Interrupts and Timers

Interrupts call subroutines when certain conditions are true. Timers let you time stuff. Together, they take a lot of the programming burden off your shoulders, and enable really cool stuff.

Labs: Driving servo motors and/or build a better audio synth, use an LED as a light-source and light-sensor. Extra credit: capacitive touch-switch!


Class 4: Serial I/O

Make the micro speak to your computer (and vice-versa). We can also cover other serial protocols (I2C, SPI).

Labs: Basic serial in/out, data-logging light sensor. Maybe SD/MMC cards? Extra credit: ADC + serial output + Python + laptop = ghetto oscilloscope.


Class 5: EEPROM, PROGMEM, etc

Tying up loose ends, special requests. PROGMEM lets you use the program memory to store lots of (constant) data. EEPROM is like flash -- there's not much of it, but it stays when you power off. Can also do misc topic requests here.

Labs: writing out really long strings to serial, saving last known states for battery failure. Maybe I can think up something sexy to use these methods. Maybe not.