[XCSSA] Links from Monday's XCSSA Arduino/AVR Microcontroller Programming Meeting

[X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio]

On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 10:59 PM, X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio <
xcssa at xcssa.org> wrote:

> On Thursday 22 May 2008 04:22:16 pm X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio
> wrote:[...]
> > For Windows users, check out WinAVR which appears to be a bundle of
> avr-gcc
> > and avr-libc for windows environs. Look at the Makefiles in the NerdKits
> > projects to see how everything compiles, links, and gets loaded to the
> chip.
> > One make does it all.
>
> Well.. Anton.. Bruce..
> Since I have your attention..  I was interested in the various IDEs you
> guys
> use.  It sounds like you both play with WinAVR.. so being the Mac guys you
> are, I assume you're running these in parallels or something?


No Macs in my life, all Ubuntu, all the time :)  Although I do use VMWare to
run XP solely for SolidWorks CAD at home and work.


> Regardless... I have a couple of related questions:
> 1) Do you know if this also works w/WINE and still talks to the hardware?


The tools we use at VEX for programming our robot microcontroller were all
written for Windows and I use them under WINE all the time.  I've even been
able to write make files that call the MCC18.exe from microchip to compile
the code.  The hex loader didn't have any problems seeing ttyUSB0 as a com
port inside wine.

I haven't played with WinAVR, just mentioned it exists for the windows
folks.  It appears (from the literature) that it is a port of avr-gcc for
windows.

I'm using vi and avr-gcc with the latest avr-libc on Linux to program the
chip.  I've never made the switch to an IDE and quit entertaining
suggestions to try one many years ago.  vi works and doesn't get in the way
:)

The ubuntu pakcages availabe are:
avr-libc
avrdude
avrdude-doc
binutils-avr
gcc-avr

For avr-libc go get the deb packase from Debian Sid, ubuntu only provides v
1.4 and it has problems with doubles and floats (synonomous on the AVR).

avrdude takes care of sending the hex file to the chip.  It would frequently
fail when writing, but a ctrl-c and retry usually worked.



>
> 2) Do you all know of ANY AVR (or Audrino) dev environment that allows one
> to
> do debug stepping through code? (akin to the old TRace ON or "TRON" mode)


I haven't seen any yet, but I haven't gone looking either.

I seem to remember from the college real time programming (and hobby) days,
> that any sort of real time I/O programming is very hard to do without some
> kind of stepping based t-shooting tool. (remember using the Buffalo
> compiler
> for the Motorola 68HC11 allowed such step debugging, even if it was via
> emulator).


Lots of trial and error.  The libraries provide a way to send debug info
back on the serial port and you can watch what is happening that way.  The
LCD is pretty easy to wire up and could also be used to provide info.  There
is also an AVR emulator but that might be good for debugging, but I haven't
looked at it.

Anton
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