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Programming the ATTiny chips using an Arduino Duemilanove and the Arduino IDE.

My two girls and I are making personalized home-made “Arduino Blinkies” this year.  We’re making the “64 pixels” display that is written up here:

http://tinkerlog.com/howto/64pixels/

This project only requires three components:

  • An Atmel ATTiny2313 micro controller
  • An 8×8 LED grid
  • A two AA battery holde and two batteries

Up to now, all of my Arduino experience has been playing with a Duemilanove with the Atmel ATMega328 in the socket.  I have seen descriptions of how to use the chip “bare”, but at $3-$5 I didn’t really feel like experimenting with them that much.  (Plus if I did use one in a project, I would have to flash the bootloader onto it’s replacement and I haven’t tackled that yet, either.)

While poking around on the Internet looking for a fun project to introduce my girls to the other side of computers and how they work, I came across the 64pixels project, and that introduced me to the ATTiny2313.  This chip (also by Atmel) is on the small end of their line of compatible chips, and costs a whopping $0.95 per chip!  The entire cost of the 64pixels project is below $5 each, so I can afford to let the girls experiment a bit and not break the bank.

So, the first thing I had to do was determine how to program the ATTiny chips on my Duemilanove.  The pins on the ATTiny aren’t the same as the ATMega so I can’t just plug it in.  Terms such as ISP (In-System Programming) and JTAG (Joint Test Action Group) were tossed around and friends on my mailing lists offered to loan me theirs – but that was like loaning a pair of snow skis to a Texan.   I didn’t know how to use it, or if I even really did.

Thankfully a few nights of searching the Internet found people had documented bits and pieces of it.  Through a lot of reading and trial-and-error, I’ve put together my notes on how to flash a common Arduino Processing-based program onto any Atmel AVR-based chip.

  1. Downloaded latest Arduino IDE (1.0.3).
    1. On my system, I’m running Linux, so I extracted it in $HOME/arduino-1.0.3/.  On a Windows system, you will install it as normal (presumably to the C:\Program Files\ directory).
    2. The “Arduino IDE” is the “Integrated Development Environment” that can be used to write, debug, and upload Arduino programs (called “sketches”) to the chips.
  2. Downloaded latest “arduino-tiny” library files to add the necessary support files to the Arduino IDE so it knows how to create the proper code for the ATTiny line of processors.
    1. http://code.google.com/p/arduino-tiny/
    2. Followed readme.txt in …/tiny/readme.txt
      1. Extracted ZIP file into ~/arduino-1.0.3/hardware/
      2. Confirmed the boards.txt “upload.using” lines all read “arduino:arduinoisp”
  3. Setup Duemilanove to act as an ISP which will forward the programming the IDE does across to the ATtiny processor.
    1. http://hlt.media.mit.edu/?p=1706
    2. Basic steps:
      1. Connect the Duemilanove to my computer
      2. Start the Arduino IDE
        1. For me I ran “~/arduino-1.0.3/arduino”
      3. Confirmed the Duemilanove was seen and communicating with the Arduino IDE
      4. Opened the “ArduinoISP” example program
        1. File -> Examples -> ArduinoISP
      5. Uploaded this program to my Duemilanove
      6. Leave the ATMega chip in the Duemilanove
        1. This step wasn’t clear in many on-line tutorials.  Given that you have to upload a bit of code to the ATMega328 chip, leaving it in the Duemilnove programming board makes sense.
  4. Chose the correct ATTiny chip you wish to program from the Tools -> Board menu within the IDE.
    1. I tried both 8MHz and 1MHz, both with success.
  5. Connected the header pins on the Duemilanove to the pins of the ATTiny2313
    1. This is another step that wasn’t clear in the other on-line tutorials.  Most walked you through what jumper wires went where for a specific chip, but no-one ever really explained what each wire was going to.  In short, there are four programming pins (plus GND and VCC) on the ATTiny chips that need to be connected: SCK, MISO, MOSI, and Reset.  If you have a different chip (“Introducing the NEW ATTiny9876”), as long as you match the “SCK” port from the Duemilanove to the SCK port on the new chip, and do the same for MISO, MOSI, and Reset, thse steps shoudl work.  (Assuming the “arduino-tiny” library has been updated, too.)
    2. Here’s a quick grid showing the connection from the Duemilanove header ports to the ATTiny2313 pins:
      • The text on the right is from the ATTiny2313 data sheet describing the pinouts of the chip.  The bolded works should match the pins on the Duemilanove headers.
      • Duemilanove header <–> ATTiny2313 pins
      • Pin 13 (SCK) <–> Pin 19 (USCK/SCL/SCK/PCINT7)
      • Pin 12 (MISO) <–>Pin 18 (MISO/DO/PCINT6)
      • Pin 11 (MOSI) <–>Pin 17 (MOSI/DI/SDA/PCINT5)
      • Pin 10 (Reset) <–>Pin 1 (PCINT10/RESET/dW)
      • 5v <–>Pin 20 (VCC)
      • Ground <–>Pin 10 (GND)
    3. Again, for non-ATTiny2313 chips, find the SCK/MISO/MOSI/Reset pins and connect them the same.
  6. Upload a test program
    1. For my first test I use the basic Arduino “blink” program.  The program performs a digitalWrite to output #13, but pin 13 on the ATTiny didn’t blink my LED.  After some poking around on the chip, I found that it was actually “pin 16” on the ATTiny2313.  Based on my testing I made a quick map of the “pinMode()” pin number to the actual pin on the chip.
      1. Outputs 0 through 7 map to pin (output+2)
        1. ex: output 3 -> pin 5
      2. Outputs 8 through 16 map to pin (output+3)
        1. ex: output 11 -> pin 14
  7. To run the chip standalone, supply appropriate voltage and ground to pins 20 and 10 of chip
    1. It may need to have the reset pin (pin 1) pulled high.
Sample test code:
int pin = 8;
int value = HIGH;

// the setup routine runs once when you press reset:
void setup() {                
  // initialize the digital pin as an output.
  pinMode(pin, OUTPUT);     
}

// the loop routine runs over and over again forever:
void loop() {
    digitalWrite(pin, value);
    if (value == HIGH) {
      value = LOW;
    } else {
      value = HIGH;
    }
    delay(20);
}
I was also interested in fading an LED in/out using PWM output.  From what I can deduce, the Arduino standard “analogWrite(pin, value)” only works on specific PWM pins that are marked with “OCxx” on the datasheet.  On the ATTiny2313, these are pins 14,15, and 16.
Sample test code:
// Define the pin to test for analog features
int anapin = 13;
// Define a digital pin to flash each time the 0..255 analog cycle has completed.
int digipin = 2;
int value = 0;

// the setup routine runs once when you press reset:
void setup() {                

  // initialize the digital pin as an output.
  pinMode(anapin, OUTPUT);     
  pinMode(digipin, OUTPUT);
}

// the loop routine runs over and over again forever:
void loop() {
    analogWrite(anapin, value);
    value += 2;
    digitalWrite(digipin, LOW);
    if (value >= 255) {
      value = 0;
      digitalWrite(digipin, HIGH);
      delay(5);
    }
    delay(1);
}

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