#avr | Logs for 2014-06-30

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[15:49:44] <Jordan_U> Does a pin being MISO mean that during programming that pin will be configured as output (the microcontroller will be driving it high or low). I'm guessing that Master In Slave Out means that the slave is always the writing rather than reading, and that when programming the chip is the slave device but I'd like confirmation.
[17:22:38] <wondiws> what is the purpose of having XTAL1/2 having PB6/7 as dual function?
[17:27:27] <Kev> if you're using the internal oscillator you can use those pins as regular i/o pins
[17:29:03] <Jartza> heh
[17:29:11] <Jartza> designed my first-ever pcb with eagle
[17:29:17] <Jartza> butt-ugly and terrible
[17:29:21] <Jartza> but hey, it seems to work
[17:29:28] <specing> Now do it in an open IDE
[17:29:55] <Jartza> ...like?
[17:30:02] <specing> gEDA or KiCAD
[17:30:31] <wondiws> Kev, so I don't need a crystal at all?
[17:30:38] <Jartza> specing: next question... why? :)
[17:31:06] <Jartza> kicad was quite flaky on osx
[17:31:11] <specing> wondiws: you need a clock. Be it a crystal, an internal RC, ...
[17:31:32] <specing> Jartza: because using proprietary tools is not future-proof
[17:31:49] <Kev> Jartza, i'm not aware of any avr not having an internal rc oscillator, so yes
[17:32:13] <wondiws> ok, I have got a ATmega8-16pu on a breadboard, what pins do I need at bare minimum to check the chip has any life?
[17:32:19] <Kev> it works at a given frequency (ie 8Mhz for the 328p iirc)
[17:32:23] <Jartza> Kev: ?
[17:32:28] <specing> wondiws: Vcc and GND
[17:32:42] <Kev> Jartza, i meant wondiws ! sorry
[17:32:43] <wondiws> specing, :P
[17:33:00] <Jartza> no prob :) I just thought I missed something
[17:33:22] <Kev> Jartza, it works great without a xtal
[17:33:28] <Kev> shiiiiiiiet
[17:33:39] <Kev> wondiws, it works great without a xtal
[17:33:40] <wondiws> but does that answer my question "to check it has any life?" I can connect VCC and GND to a dead MCU as well...
[17:33:49] <Jartza> specing: well, geda looked quite messy to me, kicad was flaky and crashed all the time...
[17:34:04] <Jartza> and the only tool I know how to use at least somehow is eagle
[17:34:18] <wondiws> but eagle isn't free ;)
[17:34:20] <Jartza> I don't see much value switching to other tool right now
[17:34:50] <Jartza> for me, being free isn't much of a value in this phase
[17:34:53] <Kev> wondiws, depends on the program that's in the flash, if isp is activated the most correct thing to do would be to check it's signature with a programmer
[17:34:57] <Jartza> and eagle IS free for my purposes :)
[17:35:13] <Kev> so mosi, miso, sck, rst, vcc and gnd
[17:35:22] <wondiws> ah, tnx kev
[17:35:23] <Jartza> oh yeah, and you can twist the semantics of being free as in freedom or free as in beer, yadda yaa :)
[17:35:42] <wondiws> ok then, Eagle ain't FOSS ;)
[17:35:59] <wondiws> but the real advantage for me of gEDA and kicad is that it's in the debian package manager
[17:36:00] <Jartza> I need a pcb now, I get something done with eagle, it's free for my purely hobby-purpose and 1-layer pcb :)
[17:36:10] <wondiws> but I myself prefer kicad
[17:36:15] <Jartza> and I'm using osx :)
[17:37:08] <Jartza> maybe on summer vacation I have so time to look at the other tools, but for now I'll use eagle
[17:37:14] <wondiws> OK, i'll try to connect my AVR-ISP thing to the MCU
[17:37:26] <Jartza> if someone knows if there's a working copy of kicad for osx, I'm happy to try
[17:38:05] <wondiws> can I use the VCC of the programmer to power the MCU?
[17:38:34] <Kev> wondiws, with the default fuses it might work at only 1mhz, so you might need to use avr-dude in slow mode
[17:38:50] <Kev> there's a flag for that i'm not sure but i think it's -B4
[17:39:19] <wondiws> pity I can't find neither of my two usb extension cords...
[17:39:49] <wondiws> the programmer is also just a AVR chip, isn't it?
[17:41:12] <Kev> most likely yes
[17:41:29] <Kev> all of em cheap chinese one at least
[17:41:48] <Kev> ones
[17:42:08] <wondiws> mine is German... cheap
[17:42:44] <Kev> ;)
[17:43:04] <wondiws> but I also have a few chinese ones, cheaper still, but I never got them working
[17:43:32] <Kev> you can also use an msp430 (ti) as programmer so it's not necessarily with an avr ;)
[17:43:39] <Kev> oh ?
[17:43:52] <Kev> you might need to flash the firmware first
[17:43:57] <wondiws> it's just a nameless usb-stick like device without name, without docs I received in an envelope
[17:44:10] <Kev> yeah i have a few of those
[17:44:28] <wondiws> I also did bit-banging with parport succesfully, but that's a hassle to connect everything
[17:44:41] <Kev> they work after a firmware upgrade
[17:45:15] <wondiws> I can connect my German programmer to the chinese programmer, and program it's avr ;)
[17:45:22] <wondiws> but I don't know the pinout of the chinese thing
[17:46:19] <wondiws> I also have Chinese boards with web-addresses printed on it that don't actually exist
[17:46:29] <Tom_garage> Jartza if you're making a single layer board you should be etching it yourself
[17:46:40] <Tom_itx> damn netsplits
[17:49:00] <Tom_itx> wondiws they don't speak the same language
[17:49:20] <Jartza> Tom_itx: yeah, I'll be trying that
[17:49:36] <Tom_itx> pretty easy really... especially single layer
[17:49:50] <Tom_itx> did you see my tank?
[17:50:09] <Jartza> nope
[17:52:05] <Tom_itx> i'd show you but apparently i need to restart my router first
[17:53:33] <Jartza> on prob
[17:54:02] <Jartza> I guess I'll try simply in plastic tray though :)
[17:54:12] <Jartza> later on I might try the cnc router at work
[17:54:56] <Tom_itx> well nothing seems to want to work here at the moment...
[17:57:02] <Jartza> https://www.dropbox.com/s/616h3nxt9mq72pv/Screenshot%202014-07-01%2001.37.23.png
[17:57:10] <Jartza> I'll try that first :)
[17:57:48] <Jartza> might be wrong on so many levels, but at least when I printed that on 1:1 size, all the pins seem to match pads on paper :)
[17:58:05] <Tom_itx> if you're gonna etch it yourself i'd separate those traces on the left where you have room to
[17:58:38] <Tom_itx> and maybe one to the right as well
[17:59:38] <Tom_itx> ok, i've had enough of this flippin router... brb
[17:59:39] <Jartza> yeah
[18:03:08] <Tom_itx> mmm
[18:03:12] <Tom_itx> that wasn't it.
[18:05:49] <Tom_itx> must be their stupid site
[18:11:16] <Jartza> hmh
[18:11:19] <Jartza> https://www.dropbox.com/s/19u4x03yoit2mz5/Screenshot%202014-07-01%2001.52.58.png
[18:11:49] <Jartza> Tom_itx: the first one was just an eagle autorouter, I fiddled with component placement to get rid of the air wires
[18:13:08] <Jartza> but yes, I'll make "more room" there manually
[18:13:19] <Jartza> but it seems that it already cleaned up quite a bit
[18:14:39] <Tom_itx> http://tom-itx.ddns01.com:81/~webpage/etching/etch3.jpg
[18:14:40] <Tom_itx> ha
[18:14:52] <Tom_itx> if one ddns goes down.. just get another one
[18:15:19] <Tom_itx> i've done some pretty fine ones by hand though
[18:16:06] <Tom_itx> http://tom-itx.ddns01.com:81/~webpage/temp/tiny/tinyboard1.jpg
[18:16:23] <Tom_itx> that SOT23-6 is a Tiny10
[18:16:44] <Tom_itx> http://tom-itx.ddns01.com:81/~webpage/temp/tiny/tinyTPI1.jpg
[18:16:46] <myself> those are so hilarious, I love that they make microcontrollers that small
[18:16:51] <Jartza> nice
[18:17:07] <Tom_itx> laser toner transfer
[18:17:32] <Jartza> I'm going to try that too
[18:17:41] <Jartza> I got some toner transfer paper from friend
[18:17:57] <Tom_itx> different paper works differently
[18:18:06] <Tom_itx> i got some of the blue crap and i didn't like it
[18:18:11] <Tom_itx> just use photo paper
[18:18:31] <Jartza> this isn't blue
[18:18:42] <Jartza> I got just paper, then some green and white stuff :D
[18:18:55] <Jartza> I haven't had time to check the instructions yet
[18:19:13] <Jartza> my friend ordered them, made 1 pcb and was happy, but he didn't need more :)
[18:19:14] <Tom_itx> meh, who reads those anyway/
[18:19:15] <Tom_itx> ?
[18:19:30] <Tom_itx> i've used all sorts of things
[18:19:34] <Jartza> this stuff is supposed to have 2 layers
[18:19:50] <Jartza> first transfer toner, then transfer the green stuff on top of that
[18:20:03] <Jartza> he also lent his laminating machine to me
[18:21:56] <Jartza> the toner transfer paper says "pulsar fx" on the box
[18:25:24] <nullvibe> ok, glancing through the links in the /topic, they seem to be all about building avr projects from scratch. any good resources for someone looking to jump in and mod existing products? and more importantly, is it prohibitively difficult to do such a thing with, say, an AT76C503A on an external device attached to a 128K sram chip?
[18:25:49] <nullvibe> seems as if there are indications that it offers some sort of serial access to the chip over usb, so maybe via avrdude or something...?
[18:38:19] <Tom_itx> nullvibe, i usually made my own boards
[18:38:35] <Tom_itx> you _could_ get an arduino and dump the arduino part and use it as an avr
[18:38:51] <Tom_itx> depends what you wanna do
[18:38:53] <nullvibe> oops...thought the IS63LV1024 was nonvolatile sram, but guess the datasheet doesn't say anything about it. must be one or more of these HFA chips that are for storage
[18:40:07] <nullvibe> Tom_itx: my soldering skills suck, but my reverse engineering skills might be second to none. easier for me to make someone else's creation do my bidding than build my own from scratch ;)
[18:42:41] <nullvibe> anyway, this particular arrangement is a usb-based 802.11b adapter, with a AT76C503A handling the gruntwork. just doing some preliminary investigation to see if they're going to be worth keeping around for later avr-related tinkering. already getting my feet wet with some msp430s and so forth, but I could (in theory) make these things do something interesting too
[18:44:45] <nullvibe> IF there's a way to pass through it and reprogram the attached flash chips, of course. I can probably muddle my way through the rest if it seems possible, but no point in beating my head against the wall if there's nothing to be learned from it
[18:45:32] <nullvibe> (and no point keeping around this stuff if it's useless junk either)
[18:59:38] <Jartza> Tom_itx: maybe better? https://www.dropbox.com/s/njnaqoa6kkd121y/Screenshot%202014-07-01%2002.41.20.png
[19:00:34] <Jartza> still need some corner rounding, but I guess that's ok for home etching
[19:00:45] <wondiws> is there a switch in avrdude to just get the signature of whatever device is connected?
[19:03:46] <wondiws> I get signature 55 aa aa
[19:04:08] <wondiws> that stands out from the other signatures, doesn't it?
[19:22:49] <Tom_itx> yeah you got plenty of room now
[19:23:05] <Tom_itx> since it's a home etch job, you can always make the traces bigger too
[19:23:31] <Tom_itx> those look plenty big though
[19:23:48] <Tom_itx> i'd edit the holes and make them fill with copper more
[19:24:05] <Tom_itx> it'll be easier to solder
[19:37:13] <Jartza> yeah, that was my next task, to make all the pads big
[19:37:33] <Jartza> and smaller the "drill hole"
[19:37:36] <Tom_itx> not so much big as to fill in the holes
[19:37:49] <Jartza> as I'm drilling by hand, I only need a "marker" to my drillbit
[19:38:04] <Tom_itx> i centerpunch the holes to guide the drill sometimes
[19:38:19] <Jartza> hmm, might be a good idea
[19:38:34] <Tom_itx> just an 'ice pick' would work
[19:38:40] <Tom_itx> just push it in the board hole
[19:45:02] <Jartza> well
[19:45:10] <Jartza> I think I'll try the etching next week
[19:45:27] <Jartza> but it's again 3:30 am here, so I'll be waaaaay tired tomorrow :)
[19:45:31] <Jartza> maybe time to sleep, sigh
[19:45:44] <Jartza> this stuff alwys carries me away
[19:45:54] <Jartza> luckily only 4 days left before vacation
[20:48:02] <nullvibe> hmm...maybe there ISN'T storage on this thing. the linux driver requires the firmware, so presumably that's the payload
[20:49:09] <nullvibe> guess it's useless as a standalone device :/