BACK IN STOCK – Atmega32u4 Breakout Board. Toss out those FTDI cables and go USB-native with the ATmega32u4. After many months of back-orders, we finally received a shipment of these little guys and are excited to offer our breakout board. The little dev board keeps it simple, with just the bare essentials:
Atmega32u4 – AVR core with USB capability. 32K flash, 2.5K RAM running at 16MHz
Standard AVR 6-pin ISP connector for direct programming (when you need the extra space)
Big Bootload/Reset button
500mA fuse on the USB power line
Power LED and ‘user’ LED (also indicates when the bootloader is active)
Fits nicely in any breadboard
4 mounting holes
This breakout board is best for those who have familiarity with some microcontrollers and are comfortable with writing code in C. This board doesn’t come with any ‘learn to program’ tutorials! If this is your first time with a microcontroller, we suggest going with an Arduino which is easier. Then when you want to upgrade, check this out.
Plug it in, connect a mini-B USB cable and you can start writing code immediately. With the built-in bootloader you don’t even need an AVR programmer. We suggest checking out the LUFA library to get started with the USB core as nearly every kind of device has an example already.
Thanks for the ATmega32U4 Breakout Board and TPIC6B595 chip. They are super! I am using them to learn basics. I always write a blog entry about what I learn. This way I am forced to learn the details and remember things better. Currently learning about shift registers and SPI.
I say “partially” self-balancing because it only balances along one axis (forward/backward), and the rider still needs to balance left and right (it’s analagous to riding a bicycle “no hands”). It operates much like a Segway — you lean forward to accelerate, and lean back to brake. The top speed is about 15 mph, and it easily goes 5 miles on a single charge. This is my primary mode of transportation on the MIT campus.
When I was a little kid, my dad worked at Bell Labs. Every year around Christmas, we’d go visit him at work. One memory which has always stuck with me from my holiday visits was seeing a Christmas tree on an oscilloscope. I was pretty amazed by it. Engineers are a funny bunch — they tend to celebrate holidays in the most uniquely nerdy and wonderful ways, just like kids. When I recently acquired a new ‘scope and wanted to familiarize myself with it, I knew exactly what my test circuit was going to be.
In honor of the nameless BTL engineer whose scope scribbling captivated me as a child, here we are. Maybe the same thing will happen for some other kid. There are a lot of holiday parties coming up. You could put this on one of your scopes at work or at your hackerspace, and some other kid will see it, and it’ll fire their imagination too. It looks pretty neat at any rate, and it’s downright fascinating after a few fortified egg nogs.
At the completion of my internship at Atmel Norway in late 2010, I was offered a full time position working as an AVR Applications Engineer in the Atmel Norway facility. While the start date of this job was delayed to give me time to finish my University degrees, I have now completed all required materials and am only a few weeks away from the big move. In early 2012, I will be moving across to the other side of the world, to join the ranks of the Atmel AVR Applications group and live in Norway.
Designing and implementing device drivers for mobile space operating systems such as Android to interface to user interface co-processors.
Managing the technical relationship with operating systems companies to specify next generation feature sets.
Team leader for a distributed group responsible for designing, building, integrating, testing, validating and documenting device drivers.
Adafruit AVR Sticker for Breadboard Arduino-compatibles – 10 pcs. These stickers are a must for anyone making a breadboarded Arduino-compatible. They fit right on top of a DIP ATmega328 (or ’168) chip, and clearly indicate every pin as it would be called in the Arduino IDE. Inspired by our video producer George Graves, we are thrilled to have these in stock!
No more looking up the datasheet or schematic! The stickers are made of a tough vinyl, usually used for bumper stickers, so they will not fade, scratch, or wrinkle. The stickers are die cut already into a rounded rectangle that fits on top of the AVR. 10 stickers made of vinyl. Each stickers is 7mm x 34mm.
Comes in a pack of ten, so you never need to feel like you’re about to run out. AVR chips are not included, but we do have Arduino-bootloader chips in the shop.
I have created a Camera-B-On TV-B-Gone. This fairly simple mod allows me to use my TV-B-Gone as a camera remote for my Nikon D90. In fact, this will work as a shutter remote for a lot of Nikon cameras.
If you have a USBTinyISP you can easily make a Camera-B-On by upgrading your TV-B-Gone.
RoboProgrammer is an automated way to program numerous microcontrollers using different firmwares, in a playlist-like manner! It was built using GRoboduino as the controller and an arduino duemilanove as AVR programmer.
With all the fuss over Kindle Fire I thought it might be fun to see if the humble 8-Bit microtouch hardware would do a servicable job as an e-reader. With a bit of fiddling it turns out to be a quite capable if not entirely practical eBook.
There are hundreds of thousands of books available in the epub format. The format is essentially a collection html/css/jpeg files and xml metadata such as author/title/table of contents bundled into a zip file (If you want to look inside an epub file simply change ‘.epub’ extension to ‘.zip’ and double click). I thought it might be possible to build a reader for the microtouch that would directly read a standard epub but the code and memory requirements for things like jpeg/png/gif decoders, xml parsers and decompression overwhelmed the available 2.5k RAM/32k Flash. The alternative was to transcode into a format that retained all the structure of the epub in a form easily digestible by a small, 8-bit device.
Microtouch – 2.4, make your own “iTouch-like” device! Sure, the latest “iTouchy” gadgets are pretty cool. But who wants a locked down device? Why not build your own touch-screen device, with your own apps, all on open source hardware and using open source tools? OK, it can’t play MP3s, but it does have a 320×240 TFT color display with resistive touch screen, an Atmega32u4 8-bit microcontroller, lithium polymer battery charger, backlight control, micro-SD slot, and a triple-axis accelerometer. Yeah, this is the next big thing and for those of us who like to DIY, you can do a lot of cool stuff with this dev board.
This product is just the Microtouch dev board (preloaded with some demo Apps), and does not include a lithium polymer battery or a microSD card. You will need a lipoly battery with 2-pin JST connector for best performance. It can run straight from USB but due to the charger design, the backlight will be dimmed so it will not appear as bright as with a battery installed. We strongly suggest our medium lipoly but you can substitute another 3.7V cell. A microSD card will be handy if you want to display images, slideshows or animations.
2.8″ 320×240 16-bit color, TFT display with resistive touch screen
Lithium polymer battery charging via USB
3-axis accelerometer, MMA7544 +-2g to +-8g resolution
Micro SD card slot
Battery monitoring, backlight control and on/off switch
Of course, we wouldn’t just leave you with a schematic or datasheet and say ‘good luck’! The designer of the Microtouch (known to us by the code name “Rossum” ) has written a full hardware core operating system and multiple demo apps such as…
Image viewer built into the hardware core, you can plug in a microSD card with images, slide shows or animations that show up as ‘mini Apps’
The Microtouch is powerful and fun but is not meant for microcontroller beginners! If you’re just starting out, we suggest checking out the Arduino to get your feet wet. Once you feel comfy with programming C and programming microcontrollers directly, come back and pick up one of these.
Blondihacks has developed a breadboard programming header for 8-Pin AVR microcontrollers called the Bread Head.
This little guy was easy to make, and has been a real time saver when iterating on a breadboard. The trick is upside-down protoboard, and longer-than-usual headers! Read on to see how it’s built.
Revenues for the second quarter increased 4% sequentially and 22% as compared to the same quarter in 2010 to $478.6 million, at the high end of our guidance about 1%, 4% sequentially. Our quarterly revenue reached the highest level in over 10 years and is Atmel’s ninth consecutive quarter of sequential revenue growth. Excluding the Smart Card sold at the end of the third quarter in 2010, revenues increased 31% when compared to the second quarter of 2010.
We set another record for gross margin. Second quarter 2011 gross margin was 51.8%. The second quarter gross margin was an 80 basis point improvement from the 51% we reported last quarter and ahead of our guidance of 51%.
Stian made this awesome sous-vide temp. controller, which he calls the “SousVide-O-Mator”. Built around an ATMega328 with the Arduino bootloader, it uses a DS18B20 temp. probe to monitor the temp, a 20×4 LCD to communicate with the user, and a solid-state relay to switch the rice cooker on and off. It also features one of the neatest, cleanest stripboard layouts I’ve ever seen (style counts!). He writes:
My brand spanking new homemade Sous Vide controller (PID controller for cooking). By connecting the relay to my rice cooker and putting the probe and a small aquarium pump inside I’m able to very accurately control the water temperature..
This is basically a heating immersion circulator as used by some fancy restaurants – readily made equipment cost in the range of $1000.. So I made one myself on the cheap (controller + rice cooker + water pump). This can be used to cook meat to perfection
This is an interesting native-USB hack. An atmel (1287?) with a microsd slot that ‘looks’ like an optical disk drive to allow booting. We think someone could probably hack this together using an our Atmega32u4 breakout board or Teensy, MicroSD breakout board, and a heavy dose of LUFA.
OK, so about a year or so ago, I was working at my bench and I could not quite see what I was doing. I needed more light! I got so mad, I built this in about a half a day, and fixed the problem. Now I have enough light even when working on tiny things with magnifiers on my head.
I now have 4 white 12″ CCFL tubes, 6 1 watt warm white LED’s, 144 cool white LED’s (in strips), and 12 5mm diffused white LED’s under the bench pointed at the floor (did you ever drop anything?). All the LED’s are ramped on and off with PWM dimming as you will see in the video above. I also have 2 more channels available with full PWM dimming. Running everything wide open will allow you to see very well, and only consumes 17 watts.
A little overkill, but I was really frustrated. And hey, who just wants a plain ole boring switch anyway? Not me…
You can never have enough lights on your bench!
UPDATE: Jeremy has made a new explanatory video (above, bottom), and shared his source code. You can check out all that new goodness here.
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