Scribd
Upload
19 views6 pages

Intoduction To AVR Microcontrollers and ATmega328P

AVR programming

Uploaded by

Schwarz Chimunhu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
19 views6 pages

Intoduction To AVR Microcontrollers and ATmega328P

AVR programming

Uploaded by

Schwarz Chimunhu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 6

Overview of AVR Microcontrollers

1
Introduction
• A microcontroller or MCU (micro controller unit) is a computer in chip, i.e., all the
different parts of a computer (CPU, RAM, ROM and I/O ports) are put in a single
chip
• A microcontroller is used to create an embedded system (e.g., a garage door
opener), where the software application and hardware are embedded together
and designed to do a specific task
• Some microcontrollers are: 8-bit – 8051 (Intel), AVR (formerly Atmel, now
Microchip), PIC16 and PIC18 (Microchip) and 64HCS08 (NXP); 16-bit – PIC24 and
dsPIC (Microchip), HCS12 (NXP/Freescale) and MSP430 (TI); 32-bit – ARM,
AVR32,ColdFire (Freescale), MIPS32, PIC32 and etc.
• A microcontroller is chosen based on: (i) chip characteristics: speed, packaging
(for space on PCB), power consumption, amount of RAM and ROM on chip,
peripherals, number of I/O pins and timers on the chip, ease of upgrade, price (ii)
ease of development: how easy it is to develop products around it, and (iii)
availability: ready availability in needed quantities both now and in future
2
Overview of the AVR Family
• The AVR stands for Advanced Virtual RISC
• Except for AVR32, AVRs are all 8-bit microcontrollers, i.e., they can work only on
8-bits of data at a time (data longer than 8 bits must be broken down into 8-bit
pieces)
• The AVR is a RISC microcontroller with Harvard architecture (i.e., separate
program/code memory from data memory)
• The AVR comes with on-chip program/code ROM, data RAM, data EEPROM,
timers, I/O ports and so on, as shown in Figure 1
• Most AVRs have some additional features (other peripherals) like ADC, PWM and
different kinds of serial interfaces like USART, SPI, I2C (TWI), CAN, USB and so on
• AVRs are classified into five groups: Mega, Xmega, Tiny, Special Purpose and
Classic
• In this subject, we will deal with the Mega family, specifically the ATMega328P,
since it is widely available, has dual inline package (DIP) and has a low-cost trainer
board (Arduino UNO)
3
RAM EEPROM Timers

CPU
PROGRAM BUS

Interrupt Other
OSC Ports
Unit Peripherals

I/O PINS
Figure 1. View of AVR Microcontroller 4
Program ROM
• Program ROM is used to store program or code, hence, program ROM
• The AVR has a maximum of 8M bytes of program (code) ROM, but not all family
members come with that much ROM
• The ATmega328P has 32K (1K = 1024) of code ROM space
• The AVR uses flash program memory – erasable in seconds and reprogrammable
for fast development

Data RAM and EEPROM


• RAM space is for data storage
• The AVR has a maximum of 64K bytes of data RAM, but not all family members
come with that much RAM
• Data RAM space has three components: general purpose registers, I/O memory
and internal static RAM (SRAM)
• The ATmega328P has 2K of internal SRAM space
5
• Internal SRAM is used for a read/write scratch pad
• The EEPROM is used to store critical data that does not need to be changed very
often
• The ATmega328P has 1K of data EEPROM

I/O Pins
• The AVR can have 3 to 86 pins for input/output (I/O)
• The 28-pin ATmega328P has 23 pins for I/O

Peripherals
• Most AVRs come with an ADC (analogue-to-digital converter), timers, USART
(Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) as standard peripherals
• The ATmega328P has a 6 channel 10-bit ADC (DIP), 3 timers, internal and external
interrupts, one USART, a byte-oriented 2-wire Serial Interface (I2C) and an SPI
serial port
6

You might also like