Get started with Microcontroller | Atmega328p
21 Jan 2013For those who are new to microcontroller, microcontroller is nothing but a mini computer within a chip. It has ram, a processing unit and all those needed for a computer to work. But in a mini scale. You can program your chip with a burner circuit.You need a software like avr studio to compile the program. Then you need a software like SinaProg to put this compiled HEX program to your chip. I use a USBasp ISP as the burner. You can buy that from www.electroncomponents.com.
For the rest of the post I use Atmega328p microcontroller. Have been playing with atmega328p avr microcontroller for sometime. It’s a High Performance, Low Power AVR® 8-Bit Microcontroller with 20Mhz speed. There won’t be much difference with other avr series microcontrollers except the no. of I/O ports, ADC, speed etc.. I would recommend avr studio 6 for compiling your program. First of all it’s free. It’s based on Microsoft visual basic platform. If you are a beginner it will be very helpful as it has code prediction. You can use any flashing software. I am using SinaProg.USB programmer link (NB:If you plan to buy it, you need to manually change the order of connecting the wire. The RES, MISO and MOSI pin are aligned miss correctly. Just crack the female berg connecter and put it correctly. Otherwise you can’t program the IC. USB A to B cable is included. You can also burn 8051 family microcontroller using this programmer.)
You may go to https://www.atmel.in for the list of microcontrollers.