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??

Posted at 7:26 pm on Jun 26th, 2008 by deoryp

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.

Posted at 11:40 pm on Jun 26th, 2008 by Phelps

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.

Posted at 9:49 am on Jun 27th, 2008 by zach hoeken