W8: Embedded Programming

The idea

As mentioned in the Electronics Design assignment, I built a "Hello Fab Kit board" so I could make the most of a single board due to restrictions in the use of the Fab Lab because of the pandemic.

The chip

I'm using the ATMEGA 328P. I didn't so much chose this chip; rather, I had one at hand when the pandemic had restricted access to the Fab Lab amd slowed down online purchases.

On the bright side, its use is very well documented and that would come in very handy to get up to speed quickly.

I found this datasheet from Atmel. I've got to say at first I was fairly impressed with the sheer length of it (and apparently it's not particularly long). It's amazing to see how consumer products have been simplified for non expert use.

It was great to finally see firsthand where many terms I've heard come from, like "watchdog" or "interrupt".

For a quick reference, I ended up coming back to this pinout diagram:

Programming Tests

In the Electronics Design assignment, I ended up burning the bootloader so it could be programmed via the Arduino IDE. Once that is done, I'll be using the following settings:

Once this setup was running, I tried a basic sketch to test both LEDs, based on the "Blink" example provided by Arduino, but tweaked for the right pins onf my board:

Here's another one to test the button, again based on the builit-in Arduino example of the same name:

Files

• Double Blink
• Button