Newbie tackles ambitious project-Help me choose proc.&dev. tools.

Hi,

I'm new to the group and to the world of microcontrollers, but can find my way around a variety of assembler languages. I am planning two projects for this summer, and would be very grateful indeed if you would suggest an AVR microcontroller, development hardware, and software+tutorial materials for each.

Project 1: A two-color darkroom led lamp controller with timer.

Feature A: Color and luminosity control. Device will have independent 2 banks, one blue, one green of high intensity LEDs. Each bank to be set at one of 10 luminosity levels using PWM. Luminosity levels (Pulse width) in 2 lookup tables, one for each bank.

Feature B: Linear and Logarithmic timer functions. Timer for lamp can be set linearly in minutes/seconds using rocker switch and increased/decreased logarithmically (e.g.2x,4x,8x) using a second rocker switch. Log base (i.e. 2, 1.41 etc) selectable using a third rocker.

Feature C: LED display for luminosity level set. 4 digit LED display for timer. 1 digit display for logartihmic base chosen (one of 7 from a lookup table).

Project 2 is a similar timer/controller with more timing inputs and LED displays, but the controlled item is a stepper motor for chemical agitation.

So, where should I begin?

Which AVR chip is the most amenable to being programmed by a newbie, and at the same time has some built in support for these various functions (log increments, timer up, timer down, LED driver etc. etc). Bare bones is ok.

What testing board should I use? What software?

My budget is $60 for the above chip+programmer/test board+software , max. (excluding the cost of controlled hardware such as the LEDs and the input switches etc).

I'd be immensely grateful for any guidance. I know it will take the summer, but I'm really looking forward to this.

Reply to
mscommerce
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You're into S&M are you ?

Why AVR ? Atmel also make '8051s', probably the world's most used uC ( for many good reasons ).

Graham

Reply to
Pooh Bear

I'd start with free winAVR GCC toolset and the Atmel butterfly. I have both, but have never got around to using them

Personally I'd start of programming in C, and then delve into asm when I need it. But then I only use the 8051, in C, and for the most part it has always been fast enough for me, and doing darkroom stuff is not really going to strech any normal 8 bit micro

martin

Reply to
martin griffith

Me to pretty much.

Absolutely right. Hardly any call for RISC architecture there ! And 8051s can use 33MHz clocks now too. ~360 ns for a typical 2 cycle instruction IIRC.

Graham

Reply to
Pooh Bear

I'll suggest a great value 8051 eval board for $25 instead.

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Graham

Reply to
Pooh Bear

Morning Graham, I'm looking at using a 8051 for mucking with AES digital audio stuff (really), with a cirus decoder, plus some TTL, I'd considered using the Alesis/wavefront AL3101 DSP,and the tools suck, but I'd still need an 8051 to control it. I'm still stuck at 11.0592 MHz clock, cos I can't be bothered to rework the baudrate timers

martin

Reply to
martin griffith

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And here's a programmer too from the same guy for $20 ! It'll program the Atmel flash 8051 parts like the 89S53. It does AVRs too. More info on this stuff here.

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Graham

Reply to
Pooh Bear

Do tell more !

Yes. I used their optimistically named 'tools' on their reverb DSP chip. I briefly trialled the 3101/2 tools too as I nearly selected one for an audio processor project ( in the end I went the analogue route ). They do work as advertised of course.

Duh ! I don't have it handy but I think I have the timer reload values somewhere for a 12MHz crystal for most popular baud rates.

Graham

Reply to
Pooh Bear

not yet

briefly

Did you try Bkasm? It looks rather useful, but unsupported, I couldnt see how to get the delay ring buffer ( whatever it's called) set up in Bkasm

martin

Reply to
martin griffith

Pfftttt ! ;~ p

briefly

of

No. In fact I only just googled it to find out what you meant. Sounds interesting.

The Alesis, sorry Wavefront assembler is hardly actually *supported* anyway !

There's a ring buffer mode for the 3101 ? Wasn't aware. In the rev chip of course that's the default.

Oh, check out the price of the 89S52 from Farnell btw.

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Graham

Reply to
Pooh Bear

briefly

of

interesting.

course

IIRC 1024 words, the pointer is auto incremented on each audio sample.

woohoo, cheap, must google for "8051 freelance programmers in India"

martin

Reply to
martin griffith

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