#avr Logs

Oct 30 2021

11:18 AM specing_ is now known as specing
05:47 PM josuah: I am discovering I2C and SPI, and at many places, I2C is described as simpler than SPI, for requiring only two lines
05:48 PM LeoNerd: simpler, yet more complex
05:48 PM josuah: is it really simpler? I2C does not have a packet structure or addressing, only a control line pulled down for the device to talk to and up to every other
05:48 PM LeoNerd: They each have their own properties
05:49 PM josuah: so it looks much easier to implement hardware side, and maybe software side as well
05:49 PM josuah: LeoNerd: so there is not really a dogfight between the two to become the "only one"?
05:51 PM LeoNerd: They tend to be used in different places
05:51 PM josuah: can it make sense to use both in a same system? to make different kind of things communicate?
05:51 PM LeoNerd: Almost any sort of low-bandwidth sensor module for example, is almost always gonna be I²C and not SPI
05:51 PM LeoNerd: SPI turns out to be in places like high-density memory chips, because I²C would be too slow
05:52 PM josuah: communication between a separate memory chip (storage, ...) and the MCU?
05:53 PM LeoNerd: Yeah often
05:54 PM josuah: thank you, that gives me a better overview
05:54 PM LeoNerd: E.g. if you look at any sort of FPGA, or the RP2040, or other places like that... nearly always those have SPI flash chips for storage
05:58 PM josuah: interesting findings around RP2040, I did not know RPi foundation did M0+
05:59 PM LeoNerd: Yeah it's a nice chip
06:00 PM LeoNerd: A bit bigger than the stuff I usually work on.. I'm usually working around the tiny814
06:01 PM josuah: in my short experience with what I have home ARM Cortex M0+ requires a lot of SDK and other tooling to get the minimum led blinky running, nothing like "#include <avr/io.h>"
06:02 PM LeoNerd: Yeah.. it looks like more effort there
06:03 PM josuah: is there any 16/32 bits MCUs without such a large environment required?
06:06 PM LeoNerd: I'm unaware of any, though I usually just stick to the 8bits anyway
06:08 PM josuah: I am miles away from mastering AVR programming anyway: I am just getting started
06:10 PM qu1j0t3: josuah: you could extract the tools from one of the IDE installations and build a minimal runtime -- I don't do this because it's not worth the amount of time it would take
06:11 PM josuah: LeoNerd: thank you for the feedback :) time for practice
06:12 PM LeoNerd: :)
06:13 PM josuah: qu1j0t3: maybe at some point I will try to build a Makefile-only hello world, instead of using "platform.io" or "run in cloud" or "run microsoft windows"
06:14 PM josuah: as either of the latest three sound like complete overkill to me
06:14 PM josuah: I might be slowly falling in love with AVR :P
06:16 PM LeoNerd: AVR is nice :)
06:16 PM LeoNerd: Ohyeah, my "build environment" is just a Makefile to drive avr-gcc.. nothing fancy at all
06:19 PM qu1j0t3: LeoNerd: so that answers josuah 's question in the affirmative?
11:18 PM specing_ is now known as specing