ATMEGA 8(/L) FEATURES TO START WITH....

GUYS THIS POST IS ABOUT A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO uC ATMEGA 8 , WHICH IS AN AVR SERIES 28 LEAD PDIP MICRO-CONTROLLER UNIT FROM ATMEL INC.

 FOR ME IT IS ONE OF THE BEST IC FOR SMALL PROJECTS AND ONE SHOULD START FROM IT BEFORE GOING INTO SOME OF THE MAJOR uC IC'S , SO LET US GET STARTED INTO THIS BEFORE THINKING OF ANYTHING BIGGER.

ATMEGA 8 FEATURES

• RISC(REDUCED INSTRUCTION SET COMPUTER): most famous computer architechture and contradictory to CISC(COMPLEX INSTRUCTION SET COMPUTER) architecture. RISC is generally very fast & executes 1 instruction per cycle.  

RISC has a fewer instructions but contains large no. of general purpose registers for fast processing.     

• MEMORY SEGMENTS :                    

1. 8K BYTE ISP FLASH: PROGRAM STORAGE.
2. 1K BYTE  INTERNAL SRAM: CACHE OF ATMEGA8.
3. 512 BYTE EEPROM: RUN TIME DATA PERMANENT STORAGE.

                    DON'T YOU WORRY ABOUT THESE & THEY ALL WILL BE DONE AS WE GO ON TO EXECUTE SOME PROGRAMMING ONTO OUR MCU.

• 130 POWERFUL INSTRUCTIONS(MOST OF THEM ARE SINGLE CLOCK EXECUTABLE)

          32*8 GENERAL PURPOSE REGISTER(ENOUGH OF THEM)

          

          UP TO 16 MIPS THROUGHPUT.

• IMPORTANT FEATURES:

1. 2 8BIT & 1 16 BIT T/C WITH FEATURES TO BE DISCUSSED LATER.     
2. 6 CHANNEL 10 BIT ADC BUILT IN 
3. BYTE ORIENTED 2 WIRE SERIAL INTERFACE .
4. PROGRAMMABLE SERIAL USART .
5. M/S SPI SERIAL INTERFACE.
6. ON CHIP ANALOG COMPARATOR.
7. 4.5-5.5 WORKING VOLTAGE.(SAFETY CIRCUIT IS REQUIRED).       

MOST OF THEM MIGHT LOOKED NEW AND HARD TO START BUT BELIEVE ME THAT THEY WILL BE DONE AS LONG AS YOU CONTINUE TO WORK WITH MCU.

                                                          PINOUT OF ATMEGA 8(/L)

NOW THE QUESTION MUST BE RAISED LIKE JUST KNOWING THE OUTLINE OF ATMEGA8  & WE ARE DONE WITH AND INTERESTINGLY THE ANSWER IS YESSSS !!!!!!!

ALTHOUGH THE THINGS(VERY BASIC REQUIREMENT) TO BE ACCOMPANIED WITH THIS OUTLINE ARE :

• A VERY BASIC KNOWLEDGE OF C/C++ UPTO POINTER, FUNC & ARRAYS ONLY.
• ATMEL AVR STUDIO 4(/5): HERE YOU WRITE YOUR PROGRAM.
• WIN AVR: AVR GCC COMPILER(FOR YOUR STUDIO 4 TO WORK)
• AVR LOADER/ AVR DUDE: TO BURN YOUR PROGRAM ONTO THE CHIP.
• USBASP PROGRAMMER AND CIRCUITORY FOR THE CHIP.

http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=2725 FOR AVR STUDIO

http://sourceforge.net/projects/winavr/files/ FOR WIN AVR 

http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Developer-Tools/AVRDUDE.shtml FOR AVR DUDE.

APART FROM THESE LINKS I WILL GIVE YOU TUTORIALS ABOUT HOW TO MAKE PCB'S AT HOME SO THAT YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN CIRCUIT(ALTHOUGH CAN BE MADE TEMPORARILY ON BREADBOARD THOUGH).

                                          

                                     THIS SIMPLE VIDEO DESCRIBES PCB MAKING @HOME 

SO, WE ARE DONE WITH IT AT THIS MOMENT WE WILL PROCEEDING TO THE PROGRAMMING PART NEXT TIME AND ALSO DESCRIBE MORE OF LCD & IT'S CONNECTIVITY WITH ATMEGA 8 TO DISCOVER MORE NEW THINGS.......... 

2*16 LCD intro...

This is 2*16 characters LCD DISPLAY based on Hitachi's HD44780 controller. This post is about how to interface this LCD display with ATMEGA 8 uC , but before that one should a bit aware of this HD44780 controller based LCD and other stuffs as well related to the uC & circuitry.

2*16 CHARACTER DISPLAY : This LCD display can acquire 40 characters in a line but only 16 are visible at a time although others can be made visible by shifting the characters. The very general LCD's has 16 pins or control lines through which bytes are R/W  and controlled. 
So, some of the important characteristics of HD44780 are discussed here :


DISPLAY DATA RAM (DDRAM): The memory area within the module contains the 8bit address of the element of the 2*16 display matrix so whatever character code you write is written on to the DDRAM. 

                                   2 line character display for any particular DDRAM address  


CHARACTER GENERATOR ROM (CGROM): The question must be raised that even if you know where to store your 8bit coded input, still the generation of the character from a given code must be done and hence CGROM is described here. CGROM  actually does the generation of the character into 5*8 dot or 5*10 dot display from the code you have given. So, CGROM  will  convert 00110000 into a 5*8 dot ZERO.         


CHARACTER GENERATOR RAM(CGRAM): This might be very interesting memory area for the LCD users because this segment allows you to generate your own characters and you even can generate your own Facebook smileys into your LCD but this one is for an experienced user , so we will make use of it later on sometime may be.


FLAGS & REGISTERS : The most common flag that is used is busy flag and indicates the status of  the process going(set for busy & vice-versa). Busy flag is read only when command and read is set & also MSB of the data pin (d7) acts as BF. 
The 2 important registers INSTRUCTION REGISTER & DATA REGISTER  and as the name suggests  these two 8bit registers are for R/W of the command & data. 








                                            pin structure of the HD44780 controlled LCD                                       

THIS POST INCLUDED THE BRIEF INTRODUCTION OF THE HD44780 CONTROLLED LCD & NEXT WILL BE DISCUSSING ABOUT THE BASICS OF ATMEGA8 AND FINALLY COMBINING THE TWO TO MAKE SOME INTERESTING OUTPUTS

SHOCK WAVE TUBE

There is going a development of a shock wave tube (similar to macmillan blast tube) in DRDO, DELHI which will carry out an environment similar to BLAST CONDITIONS on small animals like RATS , ad libitum . This will help in studying the injuries occur to people i.e. Blast-induced mild traumatic brain injury (bTBI) . This tube will have many features so as to make perfect environment similar to blast conditions. Beside studying blast injuries it will also help in developing and carrying blast kind of environment to test blast conditions on Blast suit and other materials. This will coming soon.

as it can be seen in 'the hurt locker'