Do you know what you’re doing when integrating PC-side apps with USB microcontrollers?
posted Oct 31st 2011 3:01pm by Mike Szczysfiled under: Microcontrollers
The advent of integrated USB peripherals in microprocessors (PIC, AVR, etc.) has certainly taken a lot of the work out of developing USB devices, not to mention reducing the silicon parts in these designs. But do you know what you’re doing when it comes to controlling them with user-friendly applications? [Simon Inns] is lending a hand with this in his recent tutorial. He shows how to use USB capable AVR chips along with your own Windows applications.
After the break you can see the video from which the above screenshot was captured. That’s a development board of his own making which hosts an ATmega32U4, as well as a USB-B port, LEDs, potentiometer, and a few switches. Taking a closer look, we love the breadboard friendly headers he used on the bottom of the board to break out all of the pins.
His demo shows the Windows app turning LEDs on the board on and off, as well as ADC data displaying the current potentiometer position with the onscreen dial. His code package includes the hardware design, firmware, and app software needed to follow along with what he’s doing.
Astonished that there’s not yet much reaction to this, Biomed points out that this leads to USB interfaced AVR devices of ANY sort. Weather stations, robots, test bench equipment, you name it. Here we have the keys to the Kingdom of Interfacing ANYTHING Directly to a PC with code on the AVR and Code on the PC. Whatever you want! And doing it with user-level APPS on the pc side. The only explanation I can find for such a lack of immediate enthusiastic response is that you’ve all dug deep into your parts bins and are busy implementing it all right now!