ATTINY SMD IC
Microcotroller Data Sheet
ATTINY 44 Pin Layout
ATTINY Overview
Reading and Understanding a Microcontroller datasheet
Well the first thing I learned about the datasheet is that it is very large and full of information. I suspect that if one is very serious about the
capabilities of the chip, the answers are in this documentation.
The datasheet contains critical information about the pin configurations of the chipset. Complete information about the pin definitions are covered as well.
The datasheet contains complete information on 27 topics including the CPU Core, memories, clock system, interupts, and timers. Various charcteristics and debugging information is included. Finally, ordering, packaging and revision history is included.
Although this document is probably not the place for it, I would certainly like to read documentation on applications and deveopment using this particular chip. As a beginner to this type of construction, that would be helpful to see the possibilities.
At this point I fortunate to be working with an expert instructor from our college. Although this was very welcome, I was scribbling down notes and attempting to keep up. In the end, I acquired a baasic understanding of what was happening. Unfortunatly, we were working so quickly that a critical error occured and we damaged the ATTINY on my board. This will need to be replaced or a new board built before verification of my programming.
This does not prevent me from doing the work, I just am not able to test it on my own board.
I am attempting to replicate the Keyboard Echo exercise. To do so I will program in C. To do so, I have downloaded and hello.ftdi.44.echo.c and
hello.ftdi.44.echo.c.make files.
First the necessary software for AVR Programing must be found on the machine you are using. These include:
- Avrdude for programming
- GCC to compile the new C code.
Getting the program requires the following commands:
- sudo apt-get install flex byacc bison gcc libusb-dev avrdude
- sudo apt-get install avr-libc
- sudo apt-get install libc6-dev
Next it is required to compile the code - convert the hello.ftdi.44.echonew.c files into the .hex files (Hex language that microcontrollers can read):
make -f hello.ftdi.echo.c.make
Connecting the Hello Echo and Programmer
well, don't follow my lead. While attempting this step a power clip was misplaced and basically fried the processor. Basically, this put a standstill on the operation. MY documentation on the steps to be taken follow below.
The ATtiny fuses need to be set to run at 20mhz. This is done using sudo make -f hello.ftdi.44.echonew.c.make program-usbtiny-fuses
Finally, the board is programmed in the open terminal by sudo make -f hello.ftdi.44.echonew.c.make program-usbtiny.
