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Before getting this board I had never soldered anything in my life. I was a little uneasy having a microcontroller as my first project, but I figured if I work on something I didn\'t care about I wouldn\'t try as hard. After a Bugs Bunny moment (what\'s cooking doc?) and a half hour with an ice cube I was ready to start. Some useful advice I was given:
- Use a vise. I used a Panavise JR Mini which you can find at Fry\'s outpost (ww.Frys.com). It can be used for other fun things like painting miniature train cars or toothpicks less than 3 inches.
- When installing the pins, use a breadboard. It will help insure that the pins stay straight relative to each other.
Install the IDC Shrouded Male Header last. It can be awkward to have on the board if you are trying to use the breadboard technique.
After 45 minutes I was all set to plug in the 9 volt battery. I was very happy to see the green LED light up, but I still wasn\'t sure whether it was working.
At this point I finally placed the CD that came with the board in my computer. On it I found a demo version of BascomAVR along with WinAVR and the devboardM32 user manual. The manual included very clear instructions on how to put the board together (The board itself is diagramed out very well, but it probably would have sped up my time of where to put the large capacitor had I actually read the direction), along with telling you what to modify if you want to change the crystal out. I must say these are some of the best instructions I have seen for a dev board of this price.
At the bottom of the manual is a program for BascomAVR that basically pulses a pin high and low. After installing the software and configuring it for the m32 (remember, the chip is m32.def when selecting the chip type) I typed in the program and compiled it. I then attached the M32 to my computer with the ISP cable. I then did \"send to chip\" which opens a nice binary window of your code. I then went to \"autoprogram\" which then flashes the device. After it was done I took the board over and hooked it up to a breadboard and LED per the user manual. Woohoo, a flashing LED, and it only took 1 hour!
After a day of getting the hardware together, I was able to create a bot that sensed whether it was less than a foot away from an object, and turn left if that was true. I did this using 2 (of 4) PWM, and 1 AD line. The program I wrote used less than 1% of the available memory on the chip (and it may be more than 1% of the 2k limit BascomAVR puts on the board in demo mode, It was somewhat ambiguous although it could probably be figured out from the binary dump). While not the most exciting application for a bot, it just shows what you can do with this microcontroller in less than 10 minutes time of programming.
The Bascom software can seem a little overwhelming at first; however after following a few examples on this site it becomes rather simple to use. Basically you only need to set up a few things before you start programming (laid out in the devboard manual) and then if you want to get into the more complex stuff you can take it in as fast as you like.
When I got this board I was comparing it to the New Micro\'s board NMIN-0812 that I own. While the New Micro\'s board has twice as many I/O lines, it\'s lacking is some spots
- 1k vs. 2k in the M32
- 1 Timer vs. 3 timers in the M32
- doesn\'t have BascomAVR
- costs twice as much
Overall this is a great board for beginners. The documentation is very well done, and getting simple applications up and running is a breeze.
Rating:  [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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