It must be nice to be one of [kiu]’s colleagues. Some people pass out chocolates or stress balls at work as Christmas gifts, but [kiu] made a bunch of SL dongles to introduce his colleagues to the world of microcontrollers.

The dongles are based on the ATMega88PA and work on three levels to provide something for everyone. The no-experience-necessary option is to plug it in to a USB port and admire the light show sequences. If you know enough to be dangerous, you can remotely control the LEDs from a USB host using [kiu]’s sldtool for Linux or Mac. He originally included examples that visualize CPU utilization and ultimately added a Ruby-based departure countdown for the next outbound train at the nearby station.

If you’re 1337 enough you can flash your own C or assembly code via USB. Holding down the button during power-up lets you use the dongle as a USBasp so it can be flashed with avrdude. [kiu] says the bootloader can’t be unlocked through software and is theoretically unbrickable. Stick around after the break to see the full demo.

Continue reading “SLDongle: The Microcontroller Gift That Keeps On Giving” →