Personal Issues

I’ll make this short – I have had some personal issues in my life that made it difficult to post new content. I am glad to say things are better and I am resuming my post here. I will continue with the microcontroller board I am designing and the many other posts I have mentioned. I also have a bunch of new content, so I hope you will bear with me as I get back into a rhythm. I plan to post at least once a week, but will try to more often. That will really depend on my schedule.

Thanks again to all the people who have visited my blog, and hope you come back for some much-needed new content.

Odds and Ends

Make:

So I was at a local electronics store yesterday. They happen to have a book section, and what did I notice but “Maker’s Notebook”. It is a cool blue, semi-hard covered notebook. It is blank for you to put all your project notes in. There is a table of contents, numbered project pages that are graph paper, a few pages with basic electronics information, and it has a back pocket with sheets of stickers. I like it because of the page numbering and table of contents. Now I can organize my ideas for the different projects I am working on. With the graph pages I can draw schematics, write notes, even come up with some mechanical design.

This cool little notebook measures about 5 3/4 inches by 8 3/4 inches. For those of you who use the metric system it measures approximately 14 1/2 cm by 23 cm. You can also purchase it from the Make magazine website by clicking the store tab.

Ordering Parts

It may seem like it would be too soon to order any parts for this project, but it is not. I have a good idea what parts I am going to be using, plus I have a list of parts for other projects. I will look over my list and the requirements for the robot brain and try to combine the common parts. This is so I can get a bigger discount on buying in bulk. Think of it this way, if 10 resistors cost me 10 cents and 100 resistors only cost 75 cents, I am going to buy the 100 resistors. I like to have spare parts and extras for other projects. Two of the biggest catalog suppliers are Digikey and Mouser. You can search their websites for all kinds of parts.

I am also planning a purchase from Sparkfun. I am going to get an Arduino Uno, the motor shield, and a prototyping shield. I have not messed around with the Arduino before so I am going to play with one. Later I will write-up posts on the Arduino from a newbies perspective.

Time

Time is fleeting as they say. Hopefully you will bear with me, because of time constraints I cannot post everyday. The reality is I need time to draw the project’s schematics (which can take days if not a week) and prototype/breadboard the circuits to check the functionality. After which comes the board layout (again it can take a week) and don’t get me started on the software. I have some software routines that I will be able to reuse from my first robot brain. I plan to be able to reuse most of the software I write as I try to code the interface to be generic. Then the specific robot implements the interface in its own way. So I just wanted to thank you for your patience.

What is next?

Like I have said before, my next post will be the final design. In reality I can change the design anytime until I have sent the files out to have circuit boards made. In addition I will talk about the schematic capture software I am using and show you the progress on the schematic. I will include a parts list with part numbers and Digikey/Mouser part numbers so you can follow along.

With the limitations of how much storage I am limited too with WordPress.com, I might start linking the pictures from my posts to pictures on a service like Flickr or Picasa Web Album. We will see. Until then have fun.

So it begins…

So I have decided to write a blog about microcontroller development for hobbyists. Along the way I will be developing many projects that you can follow along with. Since my biggest hobby is building robots, several projects will involve something robotic . That does not mean I will not have other projects and it does not mean that the robotic projects will not have other uses. I will try to tell you of other possible uses of my projects as many will detail interfacing to and using the peripheral features of the microcontrollers.

Since this is my first post I figure I should give you an idea of the types of things I am going to cover. Let’s start with what microcontrollers I will be working with. I will be posting on the PIC series from Microchip, the 8 bit AVR series from Atmel, and ARM7TDMI/Cortex-M3 devices mostly from NXP because that is who I bought my chips from.

Some of the Microchip devices I will be using are the 12F675, 16F684, 16F690, and maybe an 18F or 24F series chip.  As for Atmel I use the mega48/88/168/328 series the most, but I also like the tiny24, tiny25, and tiny261 series chips. Moving up to 32 bit micros I like the ARM series of controllers. I have many of the NXP LPC2138 chips, and plan to buy some of their newer Cortex-M3 parts.

Being this is a site for hobbyists, I am going to rely on as much low-cost, freeware, and open source tools as I can. In fact I am going to show you how to set up the development environments so you can make your own creations. The PIC chips are going to use MPLAB from Microchip. For the low-end parts I normally stick with assembly, but MPLAB now has a code size limited C compiler, so I am going to have to try it out. The Atmel chips have several choices, especially with open source tools. WinAVR was the main open source C compiler for AVRs for the longest. Then Atmel took it over and moved WinAVR into their code base. You can still get the last release of WinAVR from sourceforge.net. People who like open source did not like this much, so a person from Make Hack Void decided to make an updated version he called MHV AVR tools. The tool uses a newer version of the underlying C compiler and support tools.  The third option for AVRs is Atmels own toolchain AVR Studio, which is now on version 5. With version 5, Atmel added in the code for WinAVR rather than it being a plug-in. Finally for the ARM processors, again I will be using open source tools like YAGARTO. A single IDE (integrated development environment) would be great and limit our need to learn different software tools. Reality then sets in and you find there are many choices. I am going to stick with the Eclipse IDE for ARM and AVR. As for PIC chips, I have seen some info on trying to develop in Eclipse so I may give it a try. This should give you an idea of what tools we will be using for developing the code.

I know I did not make every keyword a link, but do not worry as we will get there. I did not want to overload you with links. As we progress, I will make sure to include links for the major keywords used.

Stay tuned for the next post as I go over some of the initial projects I will be working on. I will also throw in a few links of suppliers I use. Until then – see you.