Joshuah Jest

EMBEDS [A Program]

Goals

+ Setup my MAC with the propper drivers, compilers, enviornments, etc (toochain) that it needs to let me program the boards I create via the Arduino interface.
+ Connect my HelloWorld board
+ Get the damn light to blink
+ Change how the light blinks to confirm that it's blinking according to how I program it

These are deiceivingly simple goals, but I'm going to try to maintain my sense of blind optomism as long as possible.

Setup

I have some minimal experience working within the Arduino user interface, and since that's where all my understanding and existing mental schemas of programming have formed, I figured I'd tailor my toolchain to work with the Arduino compiler. This is also in hopes that later I may be able to find a visual programming interface, which will most likely be aimed at hobbiests using the most popular consumer-grade boards... Arduino.

Dan Chen's Embedded Programming page had some nice instructions on setting up an Arduino-based toolchain on Mac. After chasing down the links Dan provided, and doing some searching of my own, I found a message board that offered a simpler way to setting everything up.

The setup requires:

Hardware:
+ USB FTDI Cable
+ Atmel VRM ISP mk II
+ HelloWorld Board

Software
+ Arduino 1.6
+ Xcode
+ MacPorts

Once you have all of this installed, this command will take care of a ton of messy stuff all at once:

sudo port install avr-binutils avr-gcc avr-libc avrdude

This command installs:
+ AVR Binary Utilitiess (avr-binutils)
+ AVR GNU Compiler Collection (avr-gcc)
+ AVR Standard C Library (avr-libc)
+ AVRDUDE.

All of which you will need in order to use Arduino to program your chips.

After the script runs, you will need to download the ATtiny board managers into Arduino. I did this in two ways for redundancy.

1) Download these ATtiny Master board managers which were compiled on github.

Move the "attiny" folder to Documents > Arduino > Hardware >

Board managers can also be added via URLs in the Arduino settings:

2) Arduino > Preferences >

In the "Additional Boards Manager URLs" field input:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/damellis/attiny/ide-1.6.x-boards-manager/package_damellis_attiny_index.json

With the board managers in place, you should now have ATtiny options under the arduino Tools menu.

Go to Tools > Board > Boards Manager:

This will give you a list of board suites to download and install. Don't go installing anything you're not planning on using. For this project we just need the ATtiny collection, which should be at the bottom of the list. Select it, and click install.

I'm using the ATtiny44, so my configuration looks like this:

Bugs of Fabclasses Past

At that point I thought I should be able to just plug in my board, load up some example code, change some pin assignments, and upload to see the sweet blinking light at the end of the tunnel. But then all the shortcomings of the past two electronics fabrication and design weeks began to compound.

I was never able to get my ISP board opporational, even after extensively debugging the hardware. I was able to identify and correct three millings flaws, two mis-soldered connections, and a mis-oriented componant in a pear tree. Eventually I fabricated a second board in hopes that maybe I had unknowingly burned a critical componant. Still working on this one.

In the meantime I decided to try working with the AVR ISP mk II in the electronics lab. These come pre-assembled and are supposedly reliable. If working with the one provided in the elctronics lab goes well I may pick one up for myself, if only as a reliable backup for future projects.

Bug #1: No Target Power

Upon initially hooking up my Helloworld board to the AVR ISP and USB FTDI, the ISP gave me a nasty red light. According to the indicator chart, this meant "no target power", meaning my HelloWorld board was not recieving power via USB. I don goofed. After scouring over my original Eagle designs, and comparing them to others on the How to Make site, I figured out that the MISO and SCK traces were either never routed, or entirely left out of the schematic somehow.

As a temporary fix, I patched the board with two small wires.

Green Means Go!

Well technically it means "Idle - With target power", but for my intents and purposes this meant that there was a connection to my hardware, and I could begin using my toolchain to interface with the board.

:: UPDATE: SUCCESS! ::

After identifying one last missing trace, everything works.

Notes from Class

If FAB ISP is malfunctioning
+ Bad soldering joints (try reflowing them)
+ Chip could be burnt (though they are surprisingly resistant)
+ Measure power on traces
+ Measure power on pins
+ THEN Look for design errors
Get Atmel AVR ISP to work
+ Atmel Studio (Windows)
+ + Big, but powerful
+ + GCC under the hood
+ Duel boot into Ubuntu
+ Check connections
Checking activity on terminal
+ ls usb? (usb device activity)
+ "dmsg" (all activity)
Once you get a board to work, you can design in plugins, to add "daughter" boards
You can program chips on one board, and then move them elsewhere
+ Just press it down onto a circuit board while programming it
Arduino naming position is defferent
+ Arduino doesn't work from "ground thruth" of the board, C does
+ Ground pin at pin 14, then "counts around"
+ Google ATtiny Arduino Pins
Multiplexing for displays
+ Charliplexing?

Inspiration from others

+ (During Class)