• The AVR starter kit, part STK500.
  • This is a circuit board I purchased for another product. I figured "Oh, I should have MORE than enough room for the circuit." Then I started laying things out and realized I didn't. Oh well, not a waste. :)

    This is where LEDs and resistors are now.
  • The remnants of making sure that I understood how the ISP (In System Programming) port on the AVR worked on the breadboard.
  • Decoupling caps. Always make sure to use too many of them. :)
  • The main attraction here is the ATMega16. 16k of Flash RAM plus 1k of real RAM.

    More than enough for our purposes. :)

    I managed to squeeze the decoupling caps for the AVR in the processor socket underneath the processor.
  • One of the major goals for the gen2 boards is that I want to be able to continuously modifiy the programming. So I had to have the ISP (In System Programming) port operational. This took a lot of time because I kept getting it wrong and not quite understanding exactly why.
  • Screws for PC cases.
  • Obnoxiously enough, they don't sell 2x3 header connectors at Jameco. So I had to use 3 different connectors.

    I crimped all of these cables myself. The .1" header connectors are a pain and easy to mess up, but they are everywhere and can be crimped quickly when you are in a groove.
  • For some reason, the sockets for the AVR feel upside down. At least some of the parts are designed in such a way that you don't fry the chip if you put it in backwards, I guess.
  • Power is always red, ground is always black.

I filed it under "H" for "Toy"....

I'm bringing up the gen2 circuit board.

This should be the sort of thing that a qualified electrical engineer would whip out in a matter of minutes.

But, I'm a programmer who likes to mess around with technology, so things sometimes take a little longer than they ought to.

Or I connect power to ground and ground to power. I do that sometimes, too.

But now, I can program this board to do stuff, once I get the LEDs all soldered up.

Soon, you will start seeing this board in my light art. :)

I have been working on it. First I got it to display simple pattern and then display text.

The people at MAKE blogged my little escapade. I clearly must make a gift for them. :)

Comments and faves

  1. mrbill (83 months ago | reply)

    Awesome - I'm playing with the AVR Butterfly while waiting for my header pins and wires to arrive.

    What are you going to be doing with the kit?

  2. wirehead (83 months ago | reply)

    A variety of things.

    Right now, this

  3. Vanlal. (83 months ago | reply)

    Woo! Wirehead Mk 2!

  4. ThenAndAgain (83 months ago | reply)

    dude, you want something fun to play with... ge tthe MIT handy board. You can partically put that baby together in a day. Loads of fun... Had a class project to build a lego robot and use the handy board to write some AI controllers :D weeehooo!

  5. maxw [deleted] (83 months ago | reply)

    Hi, would you add this to the Electronic Porn group?

  6. wirehead (83 months ago | reply)

    maxw: No problem

    ThenAndAgain: Hm. This is cheaper than the Handy board. :)

  7. ★

    daniel_malva added this photo to his favorites. (40 months ago)

Want to format your comment?
keyboard shortcuts: ← previous photo → next photo L view in light box F favorite < scroll film strip left > scroll film strip right ? show all shortcuts