Make: AVR Programming

Atmel’s AVR microcontrollers are the chips that power Arduino, and are the go-to chip for many hobbyist and hardware hacking projects. In this book you’ll set aside the layers of abstraction provided by the Arduino environment and learn how to program AVR microcontrollers directly. In doing so, you’ll get closer to the chip and you’ll be able to squeeze more power and features out of it.

Each chapter of this book is centered around projects that incorporate that particular microcontroller topic. Each project includes schematics, code, and illustrations of a working project.

• Program a range of AVR chips
• Extend and re-use other people’s code and circuits
• Interface with USB, I2C, and SPI peripheral devices
• Learn to access the full range of power and speed of the microcontroller
• Build projects including Cylon Eyes, a Square-Wave Organ, an AM Radio, a Passive Light-Sensor Alarm, Temperature Logger, and more
• Understand what’s happening behind the scenes even when using the Arduino IDE

Table of Contents

Part I. The Basics

1. Introduction

2. Programming AVRs

3. Digital Output

4. Bit Twiddling

5. Serial I/O

6. Digital Input

7. Analog-to-Digital Conversion I

Part II. Intermediate AVR

8. Hardware Int

9. Introduction to the Timer/Counter Hardware

10. Pulse-Width Modulation

11. Driving Servo Motors

12. Analog-to-Digital Conversion II

Part III. Advanced AVR Topics

13. Advanced PWM Tricks

14. Switches

15. Advanced Motors

16. SPI

17. I2C

18. Using Flash Program Memory

19. EEPROM

20. Conclusion, Parting Words, and Encouragement

About the Author

Elliot Williams is a Ph.D. in Economics, a former government statistician, and a lifelong electronics hacker. He was among the founding members of HacDC, Washington DC’s hackerspace, and served as president and vice-president for three years. He now lives in Munich, Germany where he work for an embedded hardware development firm which has to date exactly one employee (and CEO). This book came out of his experiences teaching AVR programming workshops at HacDC.