Electronics > Microcontrollers

Starting with AVR-GCC. Any suggestions for literature?

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FenderBender:
Hi again,

I've done a good bit of PC programming in vBasic and a limited amount of programming with Arduino. In general, I do pretty well with it but I don't have too much experience with micro-controller programming. I would use my Arduino more...but I feel like I would be cheating myself if that makes sense. I'm still in high school and I hope to go to school for EE. I think real programming would be of more value to me...but I'm not sure.

I'm going to try to get started. I am thinking of using the AVR Dragon programmer which is fairly cheap.

Any good references? Or ways to get the programming juices flowing?

Thanks.

fmaimon:
Check out the tutorial section of AVRFreaks.net . Lots of good info there.

TerminalJack505:
Read the AVR-LibC User Manual and the appropriate datasheet.  This will cover at least 80% of what you will need to know.  Even more if you are using AVR/Atmel Studio since you won't need to know about makefiles and avrdude in that case.

McMonster:
What was said above and WinAVR (if using Windows), Eclipse and AVR Eclipse plugin. No need to care about makefiles, easy fusebit setting, little overhead.

Ed.Kloonk:

--- Quote from: FenderBender on April 26, 2012, 10:03:20 pm ---Hi again,

I've done a good bit of PC programming in vBasic and a limited amount of programming with Arduino. In general, I do pretty well with it but I don't have too much experience with micro-controller programming. I would use my Arduino more...but I feel like I would be cheating myself if that makes sense. I'm still in high school and I hope to go to school for EE. I think real programming would be of more value to me...but I'm not sure.

I'm going to try to get started. I am thinking of using the AVR Dragon programmer which is fairly cheap.

Any good references? Or ways to get the programming juices flowing?

Thanks.

--- End quote ---

Is nice to still see people in high school getting into coding. I have to say though this (I don't want to say Arduino snobery) can lead to problems since there are times when an arduino would be perfect to work on.

For example, when I was a boy  :o  we had a computer call a commodore 64. And if you wanted to hit the road with it you had to carry around a TV set. Today, you can take an ultra book, a Arduino and the usb cable and you can hack yourself crazy.

Don't worry about the interface. OK worry because that Arduino IDE is just bloody terrible, but what I'm saying is work on your own coding style. Learn to identify different C coding styles and techniques and pay attention to the way people use comments. This is the most important thing. If you comment your code well you can easily port it to another platform. And understand it later.

Also remember to make your code modular so you can swap in and out revisions of parts as needed. Now find an itch to scratch and hit up Google or forums if you get stuck.

The best book on programming, if you insist, is this one:
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ (The Art Of Unix Programming)

Now I realize it's a UNIX book but there is some interesting pros and cons of coding choices formulated to help you decide what kind of coder you are and what to do given a paradox.

Nearly all of this book can be applied to the way to program anything. Notice that the philosophy is at odds with corporate electronics design where sharing freely your code and ideas is simply horrifying. Notice also that the author gives away the book on the net for free. But you can but the much more preferred printed version like I did.

 :)

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