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Smaller ATmega

A project log for D1 Mini Tote

A version of Tote with the D1 Mini ESP8266 board as a brain.

dehipudeʃhipu 02/18/2017 at 18:263 Comments

The ATmega8 chips arrived, and I decided to try and see if my servo controller code will run on it equally well as on the ATmega328p that I used previously. After soldering it to the PCB (I'm getting better at it) I edited the Makefile to change the target, ran it and... got errors. Looks like a couple of registers got renamed, so I took the datasheets, compared them and made the appropriate changes. This time it compiled, so I flashed it to the chip, and... it doesn't work. I looked again, and realized that the fuses are completely different for this chip! To the avr fuse calculator. I changed the fuses in the makefile, flashed again and... it works!

I still need to properly debug and finish the Python code for walking -- the last weeks were a bit too busy to setup the testing and focus on this properly, but I hope I will get it done soon.

By the way, I also received the PCB for the #SpiderWing -- the Feather version of this. I'm going to be developing them both in parallel for now.

Discussions

Thomas wrote 02/19/2017 at 09:17 point

I ported some ATmega328 code to the ATmega8, and I agree that maintaining a portable version of the code requires some attention. At $0.50/piece the ATmega8 is a good µC. If you ever need something that's even cheaper (and no less capable) you may want to have a look at the STM8S003F3.

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deʃhipu wrote 02/19/2017 at 10:05 point

Looks interesting. I ordered a bunch and will try to setup a dev environment when I have a free moment -- however, this is actually the largest cost for me, the time investment needed.

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Thomas wrote 02/19/2017 at 11:31 point

The value of the time spent on building a development platform can't be underestimated :-) Keep it up!

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