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AVR Basics
AVR Basics
In autonomous robotics, the robot interacts with the
environment autonomously. Hence, it must have certain control
system which governs its movement. It requires a brain which
receives the external signals, interprets it and performs an
action accordingly.

Here is where microcontroller steps in. Microcontrollers are the

brain of the robotic system. Here, well discuss and learn about
the basics of working with AVR microcontrollers.

Microcontrollers Vs. Microprocessors:

A microcontroller is a specialized form of microprocessor that is

designed to be self-sufficient in comparison to
microprocessors. Microprocessors comprise of the CPU which
has ALU, (). Microcontrollers in addition to CPU has ROM, RAM,
parallel I/O, serial I/O, counters and a clock circuit. The prime
use of a microprocessor is to read data, perform extensive
calculations on that data, and store the results in a mass
storage device or display the results. The design of the
microcontroller is driven by the desire to make it as expandable
and flexible as possible whereas, the prime use of a
microcontroller is to control the operations of a machine using a
fixed program that is stored in ROM. The microcontroller is
concerned with getting data from and to its own pins; the
architecture and instruction set are optimized to handle data in
bit and byte size.

Nomenclature of Atmega uCs :

Pin configuration

First of all, note that the ATMEGA16 and ATMEGA32 MCUs are
completely similar, except the fact that their memory features
are different. ATMEGA16 has 16KB Flash, 1KB RAM and 512B
EEPROM whereas ATMEGA32 has 32KB Flash, 2KB RAM and
1KB EEPROM.

1. Okay, now lets start understanding the 40 pins of

ATMEGA 16/32. ATMEGA16 has 4 ports namely
PORT A, PORT B, PORT C and PORT D. The
respective pins are namely PA0-PA7, PB0-PB7,

PC0-PC7, PD0-PD7. Each of these ports comprise

of 8 pins. Ports are the means by which the uC
accepts or gives out data. So, you can realise now
that you already know the function of 4x8=32 pins
of the uC.

2. The rest of the eight pins are VCC, GND,

RESET(bar),

AVCC, AREF, XTAL1, XTAL2.

Vcc and Gnd, as you might clearly understand are the pins for
the power supply of uC. ATmega16/32 works at 5V. Exceeding
this voltage at power supply might result in burning of the IC.

The Reset (bar) pin, as the name suggests is to reset the uC.
However, its an active low pin, i.e. It gets activated when you
give it a low signal.

AVCC, is the Analog VCC. The uC has the feature of Analog to

Digital converter(You can learn about ADC in detail in the ADC
tutorial). For this feature the uC requires an Analog circuit which
needs to given power externally. So, this analog circuit is
powered by AVCC.

 AREF, if the Analog Reference voltage pin. This is again used

for ADC purposes.(You can learn about ADC in detail in the ADC
tutorial)

The uC by default works at 1Mhz(internal frequency). We can

connect an external crystal oscillator to generate higher
frequencies and clock pulses. This external oscillator is
connected across the XTAL pins (XTAL1 and XTAL2).

In ATmega16, the pins are capable to perform more than one

task. For example, you can see the pins PA0 (ADC0), PB5
(MOSI), PC2 (TCK), PD1 (TXD) etc. These are known as the
Alternate Functions of the pins. The Alternate Functions of
these pins become active only if you enable certain bits of some
registers.

Peripherals

Peripherals are the extra in-built features that ATmega

provides. There are several

peripherals that AVR offers in

ATmega16/32, some are as follows:

ADC Analog to Digital Converter (10-bit resolution)

Timers two 8-bit and one 16 bit timers

USART Universal Synchronous Asynchronous Receiver

Transmitter

4 PWM channels - Pulse Width Modulation

External and Internal Interrupt sources

You can find more extra features of uC in its datasheet.

Separate tutorials have been devoted for usage of these
peripherals.

Registers
Register is a small amount of storage available as part of a CPU
or other digital processor. Such registers are (typically)
addressed by mechanisms other than main memory and can be

accessed more quickly. These are used to configure the

functionality of a uC. Since, ATmega16 and ATmega32 are 8-bit
microcontrollers, all the registers in them are of 8-bits.

example : Suppose you want to implement timer through your

uC. Youll have to tell the microcontroller in your program that
you want to use this feature of uC. This purpose is fulfilled by
registers.

Each bit of these registers help in configuring the uC for the

feature usage. How its value must be set neednt be
remembered, they can be referred from the datasheet.

All the calculations in the uC are also done using 8-bit registers.

example : If you want to store an integer in the microcontroller,

then the microcontroller will use 4 registers to save that value
as ATmega16 and 32 are 8-bit uC and the integer value is of
32-bits (32/8 = 4).

Fuse Bits
The AVR microcontroller (ATmega16) consists of sixteen fuse
bits which are classified as low fuse and high fuse. These Fuse
bits can be configured to select the microcontroller clock
options or to control some in-built peripherals like JTAG, SPI etc.

Once you set the appropriate fuse bits, you need not set it every
time you program the uC until you want to use it under different
configuration.

High Fuse Bits:

Fuse Bit

OCDEN

JTAGEN

SPIEN

CKOPT

EESAVE

BOOTSZ1

BOOTSZ0

BOOTRST

Bit No.

Default

values

Low Fuse Bits:

Fuse Bit

BODLEVEL

BODEN

SUT1

SUT0

CKSEL3

CKSEL2

CKSEL1

CKSEL0

Bit No.

Default values

 The CKSEL bits stand for Clock selection. It is via these bits
that uC determine which clock has to be used. (1111-1010 for
external crystal)

SUT bits determine the Start Up Time. (We usually prefer the
longest start time(11) to ensure everything settles down by
then.)

BODEN and BODLEVEL configure brown out detection

settings. Brown out detection unit continuously monitors Vcc
level with fixed trigger level.

BOOTSZ, BOOTRST stand for boot size and boot reset

configure bootloader (a small program that is executed on at
boot time of uC) settings.

EESAVE bit determines whether or not the EEPROM content is

to be erased or not.

JTAGEN, SPIEN are the ones which configure the JTAG, SPI
peripherals. (JTAG disabled when 1)

 CKOPT, this bit selects two different modes of oscillator

amplifier. For full rail-to-rail oscillation, bit should be 0 else 1.

OCDEN, The on-chip debugging is used to run the program

step-by-step on hardware to study the internal signal which
provides the information about state of the processor. This bit is
to enable(0)/disable(1) that.

Considering our requirements at this stage, where we use an

external crystal at highest frequency, JTAG disabled, the fuse bit
settings come out to be 0xC9FF.

Prerequisites
Now that we have some basic knowledge about uC, lets learn
how to work with it.

Before you start working with AVR, basic thing you need to know
is how to program the chip and writing programmes for the chip.
AVR microcontrollers are programmable in C language.

Softwares Required:

1.

Software in which you can write the code for your uC.

2.

Software which can burn your code into the uC.

Hardware Required:

1.

Microcontroller

2.

Programmer

3.

A development board (would be better for a beginner)

For complete programming tutorial, refer to AVR Programming.

Datasheet
If you want to know anything and everything about the uC youre
using, refer to its datasheet. The datasheet contains all you
want to know about bit settings, its actual working, its behavior,
tolerance etc.

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