Welcome
Arv Evans
I see that you have joined our AVR Development group. Welcome aboard!
Other members to date are Eric and myself. There is a web page and a
blog page associated with this discussion group. The web page is at
<http://avr.development.googlepages.com>, and the blog site is at
<http://avr-development.blogspot.com/>. Once you visit the web page it
should be obvious where we are going with all this.
The objective is to develop a standard set of "ugly-construction" type
boards for the AVR chips. This avoids the usual process of laying out a
PCB, have it etched, and then populating it with components, before one
can do meaningful work with AVR chips. If we are correct, there is a
group of experimenters out there who might play with the AVR devices but
don't want to go the route of etching their own PCBs or the cost of a
commercially made PCB. By using ugly-method assembly they can quickly
make inexpensive one-off AVR projects at minimal cost. This method also
fits in very well with our Ham Radio ugly-constructed projects, like the
BITX20, SDR Radios, QRSS systems, and other similar efforts.
The web page, the blog, and this discussion group are all open for
public viewing and use. Once we have progressed a bit further and have
some actual circuitry, software, etc. available on the system, it might
be opportune to invite Dick VK6DI, and others with similar interests to
join this group.
I am hoping to have the Vanilla AVR board together and it's schematic
diagram, physical layout, & a picture posted on the web site by sometime
this coming weekend. At the same time I will be assembling a
programming dongle, also for publication on the web site. The Vanilla
AVR Board will also support in-circuit programming and a dongle for that
will also be shown. There is nothing new about any of this circuitry,
except that it will all be done using ugly-construction method and thus
will be reproducible by nearly anyone in a mater of minutes instead of
hours to etch a PCB or days to have a commercial board made and delivered.
Once the Vanilla AVR Board is done and some software has been written to
prove that it works, we plan on looking at other AVR chips and making
development board layouts for some of them as well. It is also expected
that other members of the group will be building and submitting their
efforts for publication via this system. Eventually we should have a
set of basic development boards, and a bunch of projects that have
evolved from them.
Eric is presently working on ways to consolidate pictures, files, etc.
so they will be common to the web page, the discussion group, and the
blog. Not sure yet just how this will work out, but if possible it
could provide a way to seamlessly integrate all these tools into a
working system to facilitate collaborative development work by a bunch
of like minded individuals.
Arv
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Hans Summers
Arv, Thanks for the welcome!
Here's my recent wind logger project http://www.hanssummers.com/electronics/equipment/wind
And I also have a GPS-disciplined 10MHz OCXO frequency reference under
construction too, which also uses an ATtiny2313. In neither of those
cases, nor any other case, do I ever consider using a PCB! I either do
it "ugly" style or on matrix board (plain, not the one with copper
strips).
73 Hans
Arv Evans
I knew you were one to avoid PCBs if at all possible. I think there are others out there with similar thinking. That is why we built this web/blog/group tool.
Arv
_._