Well, took a couple weeks off from dealing with getting this thing started. We got busy at work (holidays), and I had a week vacation coming up.
Cables: Ended up making some, sort of... Had some motors with header sockets and cables. Was able to remove the cables and pin sockets from the holder. Soldered two together, some heatshrink... Not real pretty, and a tight fit on the header pins (the heatshink is a little too thick). Figured it would at least get me started. Somebody could cash in on making cables and jumpers, not much out there ready-made.
I went with a beginner's example for flashing an LED. It was for a different chip, but all AVRs are suppose to have the same core, also figured the assembler would take care of the tech stuff with the include file. Took me some searching manually through the directories to find where the include files were, and figure out which one for the Tiny13 I planned to use.
The simple program just wrote 255/FF to a register, then went to an endless loop that decremented the register and sent out to PortB. I took a few shortcuts on the breadboarding, but figured it wouldn't do any harm. The beginner's guide didn't show any hardware setup, so I had a programmed chip, but needed to hook it up solo. My mind was still flooded with all the stuff I'd been ready since beginning this adventure. Resets, pull-up resistors, tri-states, which pin out of the 6 will actually be flashing the LED??? So, obviously thinking too much... I just went with a 7805 regulator and a 9v battery for the power supply (no capacitors, battery shouldn't cause any issues, and didn't have any .33 uf or ,1uf values handy and didn't want to go on a treasure hunt). Put a 220 ohm resistor in series with a red LED, didn't calculate the actual value need, just a basic 'safe' value that was sitting on the bench,
Applied power, the LED came on, but didn't seem to flash. Couldn't really tell if it dimmed or anything. Switch to some of the other pins, but got the same results. Did kind of think it fluctuated, but not obvious enough to call it success.
Pull the chip off the breadboard and went back to the programmer. I changed the program to use a seperate register for the counter, and another to hold the value for output. 255 was loaded to both registers, and then it goes to the first count down loop. This should turn on the LED, and keep it on. When the ZERO flag is set, I branched to a second loop, but with 0 being set out to portb. When the counter reaches zero, it branches back to the first loop. Wrote the chip, plugged it back into the breadboard, and it flashes. I haven't checked all the I/O pins, but got the same off 2 of the 6.
The first one wasn't too bad. Didn't have much trouble with the assembler or programmer. Wasn't a great example to start with, but maybe it was meant for that other chip.
Anyway, I'm in business, and got a week to play with my new toy...
Cables: Ended up making some, sort of... Had some motors with header sockets and cables. Was able to remove the cables and pin sockets from the holder. Soldered two together, some heatshrink... Not real pretty, and a tight fit on the header pins (the heatshink is a little too thick). Figured it would at least get me started. Somebody could cash in on making cables and jumpers, not much out there ready-made.
I went with a beginner's example for flashing an LED. It was for a different chip, but all AVRs are suppose to have the same core, also figured the assembler would take care of the tech stuff with the include file. Took me some searching manually through the directories to find where the include files were, and figure out which one for the Tiny13 I planned to use.
The simple program just wrote 255/FF to a register, then went to an endless loop that decremented the register and sent out to PortB. I took a few shortcuts on the breadboarding, but figured it wouldn't do any harm. The beginner's guide didn't show any hardware setup, so I had a programmed chip, but needed to hook it up solo. My mind was still flooded with all the stuff I'd been ready since beginning this adventure. Resets, pull-up resistors, tri-states, which pin out of the 6 will actually be flashing the LED??? So, obviously thinking too much... I just went with a 7805 regulator and a 9v battery for the power supply (no capacitors, battery shouldn't cause any issues, and didn't have any .33 uf or ,1uf values handy and didn't want to go on a treasure hunt). Put a 220 ohm resistor in series with a red LED, didn't calculate the actual value need, just a basic 'safe' value that was sitting on the bench,
Applied power, the LED came on, but didn't seem to flash. Couldn't really tell if it dimmed or anything. Switch to some of the other pins, but got the same results. Did kind of think it fluctuated, but not obvious enough to call it success.
Pull the chip off the breadboard and went back to the programmer. I changed the program to use a seperate register for the counter, and another to hold the value for output. 255 was loaded to both registers, and then it goes to the first count down loop. This should turn on the LED, and keep it on. When the ZERO flag is set, I branched to a second loop, but with 0 being set out to portb. When the counter reaches zero, it branches back to the first loop. Wrote the chip, plugged it back into the breadboard, and it flashes. I haven't checked all the I/O pins, but got the same off 2 of the 6.
The first one wasn't too bad. Didn't have much trouble with the assembler or programmer. Wasn't a great example to start with, but maybe it was meant for that other chip.
Anyway, I'm in business, and got a week to play with my new toy...
