Robots w/Lasers » AVR http://blog.davr.org Nintendo DS & GBA development, microcontrollers, and occasionally FPGAs Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:51:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 It Works! http://blog.davr.org/2008/01/09/it-works/ http://blog.davr.org/2008/01/09/it-works/#comments Thu, 10 Jan 2008 02:54:49 +0000 davr http://blog.davr.org/2008/01/09/it-works/ I’ve finished assembling my little gadget…and it works! As a side note, Flux is super handy, it made soldering the tiny SMT stuff really easy, also I learned a few tips from this video.

I ran into one small problem: on the board, I added a JTAG port for in-circuit programming & debugging. However, my cheapo JTAGICE mkI (not mkII) doesn’t support the newer AVR chip I put on the board. So I had to hack in an ICSP port, hence the four ugly green wires coming out of the middle of the board. But once I got that in, I updated the program I had running on the prototype. There were just some minor changes, IO pins were mapped differently, and the syntax for using Timers was slightly changed.

Now that the hardware is essentially done, I need to write some more software, get a few polished minigames on there.

UPDATE: Please enter your email address, I’m trying to find out if there’s any interest in these devices. If enough people subscribe, it will encourage me to do something about it :)

You can download a short video, or watch it online here:


PS: I bought enough parts (including the PCB) to build two of them…so if anyone wants to buy one, please feel free to make me an offer in the comments below :D

]]> http://blog.davr.org/2008/01/09/it-works/feed/ 12 PCB Received from Olimex http://blog.davr.org/2008/01/04/pcb-received-from-olimex/ http://blog.davr.org/2008/01/04/pcb-received-from-olimex/#comments Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:00:55 +0000 davr http://blog.davr.org/2008/01/04/pcb-received-from-olimex/ Over the christmas holiday I received my PCBs back from Olimex. They look very professionally made, it’s pretty neat knowing that I designed it completely myself. In the picture to the right you can see the board with a few of the components. I haven’t started soldering yet, but I’ve placed them on there so you can get an idea of how it will look when finished.

I’m waiting on the parts from Allegro before I can finish, I’ve requested samples of their surface mount pieces (previously I only got the ones in the DIP packages).

]]> http://blog.davr.org/2008/01/04/pcb-received-from-olimex/feed/ 0 Designing my first PCB http://blog.davr.org/2007/12/11/designing-my-first-pcb/ http://blog.davr.org/2007/12/11/designing-my-first-pcb/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2007 01:01:51 +0000 davr http://blog.davr.org/2007/12/11/designing-my-first-pcb/ So I built a pretty good prototype of my LED matrix, AVR-based toy (as you can see in my previous post, as well as this video). Now I’ve decided to get a PCB made, using mostly surface mount components, which will make it nice and compact. You can see to the right a 3D render of approximately what it will look like, right now a company in Bulgaria is fabricating my PCB, hopefully I’ll get it within another week or two.

Whether or not it actually will work once I get it & assemble it, remains to be seen.

I used cadsoft’s Eagle tool to design the PCB, and I used this plugin along with povray in order to create the 3d render. Also I sort of edited in the image of the LED matrix…since they didn’t already have a 3d part built for it. But it looks reasonable enough I think.

]]> http://blog.davr.org/2007/12/11/designing-my-first-pcb/feed/ 0 AVR Project update http://blog.davr.org/2007/09/24/avr-project-update/ http://blog.davr.org/2007/09/24/avr-project-update/#comments Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:48:10 +0000 davr http://blog.davr.org/2007/09/24/avr-project-update/ I’ve had a little time to come back to working on my AVR ATMega-based project. First of all, I replaced a bunch of free wires with a ribbon cable, which makes things a lot easier to handle. I’ve also wired up the buttons, so now I can write little programs which can be controlled by user input. Right now you can just move the dot around and change its color, next I think I will make a 1 or 2 player pong game.

Download a short video of it in action (~700KB), or view it here:


AVR Plus LED Matrix

UPDATE: I’ve got Pong running on it now. Check out the video:

]]> http://blog.davr.org/2007/09/24/avr-project-update/feed/ 5 Schematics http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/29/schematics/ http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/29/schematics/#comments Wed, 29 Mar 2006 08:26:48 +0000 davr http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/29/schematics/ Here I am posting the schematic of the current design, and my proposed schematic for design revision 2. The main changes are:

  • Directly drive the ROW inputs with transistors, instead of using shift register. I have enough I/O pins that there is no need for a shift register here, and the transistors will allow a decent amount of current through.
  • Limit the current coming out of the COLUMNS with resistors. This is needed now that there will be more current flowing through. Before I got away without them, probably because each row was being driven by a single output pin of the shift registers
  • Use shift registers on columns as before, but this time with a latch, so you wont see the data being shifted in. Thus the ‘off’ LEDs will really be off, instead of the faint flicker/glow
Schematic Rev. 1
Schematic Rev. 1
(What I currently have built)		 Schematic Rev. 2
Schematic Rev. 2
(What I am planning to change next time)
]]> http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/29/schematics/feed/ 0 Ported to C http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/19/ported-to-c/ http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/19/ported-to-c/#comments Sun, 19 Mar 2006 22:35:44 +0000 davr http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/19/ported-to-c/ I ported the code to C. Now it is easier for me to work with.

This makes it easy to scale things, so now I have 10 boucing lights instead of one:

Bouncing lights

bounce3.mpg – 3MB

I’m no ASM master, so I could probably be doing it the hard way, but this code in ASM:

mov tmp1, ballX
lsr tmp1
lsr tmp1
com tmp1
andi tmp1, 0b00000001
mov tmp2, ballY
lsl tmp2 ; multiply by 2
add tmp1, tmp2
ldi tmp2, 0x60
add tmp1, tmp2
ldi yh, 0x00
mov yl, tmp1 ; Y now points at loc in VRAM

mov tmp1, ballX
andi tmp1, 0b00000011
lsl tmp1
ldi tmp2, 1
cpi tmp1, 0
brne shiftit
rjmp shiftdone

shiftit:
lsl tmp2
dec tmp1
brne shiftit

shiftdone:

ld tmp1, y
or tmp2, tmp1
st y, tmp2

Translates to this code in C:

VRAM[ballY] &= ~(1 << (ballX*2));

As you can see, it’s a bit simpler now.

]]> http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/19/ported-to-c/feed/ 5 Bouncy http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/15/bouncy/ http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/15/bouncy/#comments Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:55:52 +0000 davr http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/15/bouncy/ I finally got the code worked out for bouncing a little ball around. Here’s a short movie:
A single bouncing LED
bounce.avi – 200KB
MPG1 format – 1.1MB
I think next, I am going to rewrite all this code in C. The ASM is getting too complex for me to manage efficiently, I spend too much time tracking down ASM bugs versus actually writing code.

]]> http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/15/bouncy/feed/ 0 Smiley http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/15/smiley/ http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/15/smiley/#comments Wed, 15 Mar 2006 17:38:02 +0000 davr http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/15/smiley/ I hardcoded this pattern to load into SRAM on bootup:

Smiley face

]]> http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/15/smiley/feed/ 0 Patterns http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/14/patterns/ http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/14/patterns/#comments Wed, 15 Mar 2006 07:08:50 +0000 davr http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/14/patterns/ Ok, now I’ve written the code to display patterns from RAM, but I haven’t written the code to actually update those patterns. So I’m not sure exactly where this pattern is coming from. But it’s slightly more interesting looking now:

Color patterns

Still the same problem with the ‘off’ leds lighting up slightly, but I think it’s not too bad for now. Next up, I think I’ll animate a simple 1-pixel ‘ball’ bouncing around or something.

]]> http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/14/patterns/feed/ 0 Unlatched color http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/13/unlatched-color/ http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/13/unlatched-color/#comments Tue, 14 Mar 2006 07:29:33 +0000 davr http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/13/unlatched-color/ March 13th:
Here it is you can see the different colors possible:
An 8x8 grid of off, red, green, and orange LEDs
One problem, is I am using shift registers without a latch. So as the data is shifted into place, it appears on the incorrect LEDs for a very short amount of time. Which causes them to light up a short amount of time. I’m not sure there is anything I can do about this, besides shifting the data into place faster: currently my AVR is clocked at 8mhz, but it supports up to 16mhz (I just need to put in a different crystal). I think best solution is to use a latch though.

]]> http://blog.davr.org/2006/03/13/unlatched-color/feed/ 0