Arduino environment on ATmega644

posted Jun 26th 2008 5:30pm by Juan Aguilar
filed under: arduino hacks, misc hacks

Our friend [Zach Hoeken] at NYC Resistor is porting the Arduino environment to an ATmega644 chip. This doesn’t really add new functionality to the ATmega644 as it is already fully programmable, but it does add a user-friendly and familiar environment to the ATmega, allowing users to build their Arduino-based projects with more powerful hardware. The ATmega is, after all, the biggest DIP package AVR makes, featuring 64k flash and 4k RAM (both four times as much as an Arduino) and 32 I/O pins, which is 12 more than an Arduino. The video is only proof of concept, so we will let you know when [Zach] releases more details.

[via NYC Resistor]

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Comments [3]

tagged: arduino, atmega, atmega644, environment, microcontroller, porting

3 Responses to Arduino environment on ATmega644

deoryp says:

June 26, 2008 at 7:26 pm

Arduino is just the software, and the popular chip happens to be the atmega168, but Arduino is designed to be run on any atmega family chip, even the atmega256x which is better than a 644. Arduino is the abstraction layer… Right??

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Phelps says:

June 26, 2008 at 11:40 pm

Arduino is the abstraction layer… Right??

Right, but as I understand it, it the compiler just needs to be updated to be able to properly compile for the new chip.

I was really worried about having enough pins, but now that I think I am starting to understand serial registers and I2C, I’m much less worried. The extra memory seems to be a much bigger deal.

Of course, it is often nice to be able to give up on clever and whup out the big hammer.

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zach hoeken says:

June 27, 2008 at 9:49 am

arduino is 3 different things wrapped up into one nice package that *just works*. that is one of the major reasons why it is so popular.

it is:

* firmware library that makes programming a uC a breeze. pinMode, digitalRead, digitalWrite, etc all abstract away the nastiness of manually setting bits in a register.

* software that gives you a drop dead simple build environment and a super easy way to get your actual code onto the board itself. lump the bootloader into this.

* electronics to actually run your code. also packaged nicely so that its easy to use.

i didnt really intend for this board to make it all the way onto MAKE and hackaday, so it doesnt explain exactly what i’m doing, but i’m making the entire package. i have a board designed, 90% of the firmware library ported, the host software compiling 644 code, and now all that remains is to get the bootloader working and you have a fully compatible atmega644 board that you can use with arduino.

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