AVR Programming: Learning to Write Software for Hardware (Make: Technology on Your Time)

I have read the reviews on this book and have seen a variation of opinions. What seems to drive the rating is how well the reader’s expectation of the book matched the experience. I love this book and give it 5 stars because of how I use the book; my expectation and my experience was a match. Make sure you have the proper expectation and you will be happy with this book. Let me start by saying it is my opinion that this book is not for the beginner. If you do not have programming experience, or you have not experimented with electronic circuits or you do not know C this book is not for you (yet). Start with a simple Arduino Uno, buy a kit and get a beginner’s books. I highly recommend books by Simon Monk. I have been coding for 25 years and have been experimenting with electronics since I was eight. I am a hobbyist maker and have written many blogs. I have also written many libraries for a variety of devices and sensors. I have come across the need to have a more finite control over the microcontroller and have more control of performance and timing. If you are familiar enough with the Arduino environment you know that it is suitable for 98% (I made that statistic up but think it is accurate) of the needs makers will come across. But I have come across devices that have such precise timing requirements that I needed to fine tune my code. That’s where this book comes in. I read the datasheets for just about everything I buy. I love to understand every detail of every sensor and microcontroller. Sometimes you uncover “hidden secrets” that you exploit to make your solution exciting and fun. However, this book presents many useful facts about the AVR microcontrollers without the need to dig through the datasheet. The book has given be a much better understanding of the AVR microcontroller as well as added some very useful tools to my bench to solve more complex problems and to write better libraries. I recommend this book to anyone with a medium to advanced level of understanding of AVR programming using the Arduino environment. This book will take your understanding to a much deeper and more advanced level.

Excellent for getting started programming AVR MCU's. For someone like myself with no microcontroller experience, some general electronics knowledge and lots of programming experience, this book hit the spot. A couple of pointers: - I got the USBTiny programmer from Sparkfun, which works fine with ATmega168's. Just jumper the corresponding pins. - I started with the Arduino IDE, which works as mentioned in the book, but requires some fiddling with boards.txt to get USBTiny to work with atmega's. In the end it all turned out to be more trouble than it's worth. How it builds and flashes is pretty involved and far from transparent. Better to go with WinAVR as mentioned in the book, and just edit your code with good old Emacs. The Arduino IDE gets all wrapped around the axle if you're messing with different processor speeds and baud rates. I never got the USART working right at anything but 9600 baud at 1MHz using the Arduino IDE. It's much easier to just edit the Makefiles, which are very well documented. Also, if you're messing with different AVR chips, you'll want to go this route: the ATTiny chips don't have a USART and the USART.c program doesn't compile for them. You just remove that from the Makefile for ATTiny projects and you're good-to-go. I have no idea what the other reviewer was talking about with WinAVR not working when the Arduino IDE was previously installed on a Windows PC - that was exactly my setup and it worked right away, subject to the following nit: - the avrdude argument -p should be "m168" not "m168p" as stated. - I ran through most of the examples to get going - they pretty much worked as expected. - When I started messing with the ADC, I realized how slow the internal one was and went for a separate chip. The MCP3004 works a lot faster and is fairly easy (and instructive) to interface via SPI. Again, the book does a great job at explaining SPI, and that knowledge translated well. - Another point to note is that some of the projects don't work right if you're connected to the programmer. Rather than plugging and unplugging all the jumpers each time, I attached the programmer to a breadboard with a ZIF socket, and had a separate breadboard and ZIF socket for running, and just shuttled the chip between the two. - Sometimes the book only shows a photo of the breadboard and not the actual wiring diagram. If you have to pick one, the wiring diagram is more clear IMO. I started this about 3-4 weeks ago from ground zero and have gotten through almost the entire book. At this point I feel very confident about working with AVR MCU's going forward.

I was pretty surprised to find that some people struggled with this book and rated it, what seems, unreasonably low to me. As I've been thinking this through, I've come to some conclusions as to why there might be such a huge gap between those experiences and my own. In a nutshell, I think it has to do with expectations going in. I have personally been able to be successful implementing the projects without too much trouble, but I went into it already being a seasoned software engineer and for any gaps that the book leaves out for specific implementation, I've been able to fill in with other tutorials online. My main filling in the gap experience comes from youtube--ymmv. You could make the case that a book should only earn a five star review if there were no need to fill in those gaps. I can understand that argument and even agree with it to some extent, however, the gaps in my case were more because I was using a different ISP to program the AVR than he uses and I was also using different chips. To me, though, that's my own problem. If you don't use exactly what the author prescribes for achieving success, you can hardly blame him because you can't make things work doing it your way. Even if you are coming at it with that view point, though, you simply can't deny that the book is very well written and Elliot's communication is concise and clear and not heady at all. He's really down to earth in his explanations. The book covers all the topics you'd want to know about when learning to program the AVR. I really can't think of anything he left out. And nowhere does the book claim to be a beginner book. He's not teaching C programming per se, however, his explanations and hand holding with bit twiddling and the like are brilliant and not in the slightest bit patronizing. That part of the book alone is incredibly valuable. Anyhow, I give this book five stars because there is so much helpful detail and explanation around everything. You walk away from it understanding not only how things work, but you almost always know why as well. Why, for example, doesn't a servo rotate continuously like a DC motor? Because it has a different function. You'd use it for a joint on a robot's arm that should have a fixed range of motion rather than the perpetual turning you would need for a propeller motor. That type of explanation is plentiful throughout the book. The sidebars are always pertinent and help you think through what you're currently studying. The bottom line is that while your experience in putting together the project on your workbench may be varied, you cannot possibly argue that the material is not excellent. It's top notch. And if your complaint is that the github code is no good, that really should have no bearing on the way you evaluate the book itself, in my opinion. Maybe it makes the difference between a 5 star and a 4 star for some, but it most definitely should not reduce your rating to a 1 or 2 star. That's nonsense. The book's content is still really, really good. This book is terrific. If you're struggling with it, keep pushing on through, or maybe just keep doing Arduino programming until you feel more confident getting closer to the metal. Working there is fun. I'm confident this book can get you there, but it also will require some determination on your part.

If you are past the beginner stages with Arduino and want to play closer to the hardware, or work with Atmel's AVR family chips stand-alone on a breadboard rather than in an Arduino, this is the book for you! Unlike another book I got for that purpose, this one is well written, easy to follow, and appears to have actually been written and edited by competent folks. I've found very few typos, and none that interfered with understanding. The concepts are well explained and presented in a rational order. This may be heavy going if you've never programmed a microcontroller, don't know what a register is, or aren't familiar with binary math or Boolean logic, but the book does explain these to an extent if you haven't run into them before. You'll want the AVR data sheet for reference too (free download, link in the book)...the book has the info required for the projects described, but being able to put that in context with the rest of the processor description is useful...especially if you want to try things not explicitly covered in the book.

I'm writing this because as others have said the book is good but is somewhat desultory and is missing some steps and ambiguous on other. I'm writing this for those, like me, that got frustrated. After many hour I was able to get most of the examples working so here is a streamlined version of the path of least resistance to proof of concept. As others have said don't use WinAVR if you are having any issues, its super unlikely anyone is going to flash that makefile like the author does in the book and get an error free result. Also as others have said the m168p isn't even in the list of supported devices with the current github/sourceforge version of WinAVR. One reviewer shows how you can edit in the needed update to reflect the authors code but don't bother. This quick guide will just use Arduion as ISP, but should work well with USBTinyISP and USBASP which I will try next. 1. First make sure when you insert the chips you don't bend any of the 28 pins under your breadboard, I did this and it caused me hours of frustration, be very careful inserting your bug between the gap in your breadboard. 2. Go to 26 and 27 right off the bat and walk through the steps, first with the simple blink with UNO, then the second example using Arduino as ISP. if this works then: 3. Go to page 52 and instead of using the ISP(USBTinyISP or USBASP) as in the picture you can stick with the same connections you used on your Arduino UNO from page 26. Use POV TOY or Cyclone example. Now remember before you load the program DISCONNECT the ground from the opposite side rail or the three pins which have duel connections with your Arduino outputs will interfere and you will get error. Change the board to the Mini using 168 at 3.3v/5v. Make sure every light is blinking or flashing (except for 2/3 at the top) after upload or you don't have the proper connections. Again make your life easier by not using the command line WinAVR, make sure you get this working with your UNO first, then with a cheap Chinese ISP programmer you can buy off ebay (USBTinyISP or USBASP). Then try it with the free Atmel Studio then you may or may not want to work with WinAVR if your a software guy. Unlike what the author does, be careful to use the easiest tool chain first then progress to the wacky and persnickety command line stuff. I hope this helps and saves someone a lot of wasted time with problems the author should have dealt with but clearly rushed the book to press too early.

The book offers a comprehensive guide into ATMega features where each feature is explored through building a non-trivial project. And there are a lot of features. For me, the highlights of the book are the following 1. Communications via i2c, spi and usart have their own dedicated hardware 2. Analog input is not in fact an input but a thing called ADC 3. PWM is basically a clever usage of timer 3.1. Timers have a TON of applications 4. You can build the whole project based solely on interrupts 5. Interrupts are very handy 6. ATMega chips are fantastic value for money and a lot more. In short - I can't recommend it more. This is the best guide into microcontrollers programming for beginners.

I purchased this book a few years ago for a project that I was working on and needed to use an Arduino Uno. I found this book invaluable at the time to come up to speed with the Atmel AVR chip set. I truly liked that this book used more C examples versus most Arduino books use of Arduino IDE canned functions. I have written several programs to control some sophisticated hardware and spun custom boards with the Atmel AVR as the microprocessor. I used "Make Your Own PCBs with EAGLE" by Simon Monk to make the schematics and layout the custom boards. I still keep this book nearby when I am writing embedded code, since coding is not my primary job function it is nice to quickly refer back to this book. I have purchased several copies for junior mechanical engineers and engineering coops who need to make an embedded system to run a prototype system. I wish there was a similar book (and community) for the Arm chip set.

This book is wonderfully written and truly a joy to work through, it was perfect for me. I feel like recommending to anyone who will listen. A lot of the concepts that previously felt out of reach (avrdude, make, gnu_cc and many many more) finally feel familiar and confortable. Very thankful for this fun book

Vraiment très bien. Bonne introduction au c. Dommage qu'il ne soit pas question des LCD 16x2, et que soit directement introduites des bibliothèques maison. Mais à part ça je le recommande à 100%

Ho trovato questo libro, per altro giustamente consigliato dal prof. Maffucci, uno strumento indispensabile per coloro che sono amanti dell'elettronica e dell'informatica, esperti e non, o hanno iniziato a giocare con Arduino o che intendono scoprire il mondo dei microcontrollers e degli AVR in particolare. Semplice, lineare e ricco di spiegazioni, indispensabili per i neofiti, mi ha fatto entrare con molto entusiasmo in tale mondo innovativo ed anche avere la soddisfazione di trasferire un mio programmino all'interno di un MCU Atmega168P. Se quando ero giovane avessi avuto le possibilità di conoscenza e sperimentazione (per altro a bassissimo costo) oggi disponibili, forse avrei avuto la possibilità di lavoro e successo che i giovani faticano a trovare.

The book is well-written and relatively easy for a non-techie to understand. It may be a bit dated now given its subject and the publishing date, but its content and approach appears to be highly transferable to current technology requirements. Enjoyable. Amazon delivered the book very fast -- within a couple of days to our rural post office.

Otimo livro para quem quer sair do arduino IDE e programar com registradores! É uma otima ponte entre as duas linguagens!

With this book, you will learn about programming AVRs, how various components commonly used with microcontrollers work, and be entertained. :-) I'm a C/C++ programmer from way back, however, rather than skipping the asides giving detail or history on an aspect of C, I enjoyed reading what the author had to say, nodding along with agreement. I found the descriptions of how other things (e.g. MOSFETs) work helpful and easy to understand. To cap it all off the projects are fun!