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AVR Microcontroller Class 2009

From HacDC Wiki

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: Programmer Hookup and Hello World LED Blinking

Lecture on how the programmer works -- simple serial interface basics. Hook up the programming interface wire-by-wire to the Mega48 chip and flash it with a simple program. The hook up an LED to the output port and watch it blink!

Resources

Class 3: Inputs: Buttons and Analog-to-Digital conversion (ADC)

Gather data from the world.

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

Class 4: 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.