Part IV – The “Hello World” project

Now you have the basic hardware tools, its time to setup the software environment.The main software you will need are: AVR Studio – A GUI IDE for AVR(www.atmel.com, http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/AVRStudio4.13SP2.exe) WinAVR – a free C compiler for AVRs (http://winavr.sourceforge.net/download.html) PonyProg – Serial Device Programmer (www.lancos.com) After downloading them install them in your computer. It is better to install WinAVR in root of a drive like c:\winavr or d:\winavr. Also please install WinAVR first then AVR Studio, this will let AVR Studio detect the compiler. Now you are ready to write you first microcontroller program !!! In this tutorial, you will learn the basic steps required for any microcontrollers based project. We will write a basic “hello world” project, which is a simple LED blinker in MCU empire to demonstrate these basic steps. Step I Entering and compiling code. Start “AVR Studio” from Start Menu->All programs->Atmel AVR Tools-> AVR Studio 4 You will be presented with a Project wizard as shown below. Fig – AVR Studio Project Wizard Fig – Project Details   Select AVR GCC in Project type then enter a suitable project name say “hello” and select a location in you hard disk. Then click next. Make sure that “Create initial file” and “Create folder” option is checked. Fig – Device Selection   In this dialog box select AVR Simulator […]

Part III – Making Programmer and Target.

Now you know what tools are required for MCU based development. And you are familiar with their uses. Now time to start some real development.To cover these parts you must have some basic knowledge and tools of electroniccircuit fabrication. So now, let us start with the most important tool the programmer. Making a programmer. There are many different types of programmers available on the net. The basic difference is their interface with the PC. Basically, there are three types of programmers. Serial Port based Parallel Port based USB Port based. Of these serial port based and parallel port based programmers are easy to make in minimal cost. However, the parallel port is little bulky as compared to serial port, I prefer serial one. One of the best programmers I have come across is PonyProg(http://www.lancos.com) Serial Device Programmer it is a package of simple and low cost programmer with easy to use GUI software. I have been using it from long time. So here I will teach you to make PonyProg device programmer.   Note As the serials and parallel ports are very old technologies they are fast disappearing from PCs. Most laptops are not having them and even desktops are dropping them. Therefore, its no surprise that your PC does not has serial ports. In this case, you have to […]