Memos From the Cube

Yep, the sky’s fallen – LUFA is mentioned in the January 2010 issue of Elektor Electronics magazine. It’s in the article by Antoine Authier called “AVR Meets USB”, and it gets a good page or so. Elektor’s a magazine so famous that even we poor Aussies get copies (apparently), so I’m totally stoked by the recognition it will bring me; this will definitely be something to mention in future job interviews.

Actually, I’m considering (at the push of AVRFreaks members) writing my own articles for Elektor, since it’s a great opportunity to become better known in the Electronics world, and would also add to my resume for when I’m out of University. Martin from AVRFreaks has given me a contact at Elektor who I’ve sent along an email to, asking what sort of articles they are interested in. Ideally I’d convert my long-winded USART and Timers tutorials (see my full tutorial list here) into proper articles for publication, since they’ve been generally well received by those new to AVRs.

One issue with the article is that it explicitly mentions Class Driver Host mode, which is currently slightly broken in the latest release. I was hoping to get PDI (XMEGA) programming completed in the AVRISP project before the next release at the end of the month, but it looks like that will have to be deferred until January so I can get a working official release out the door by the publication date.

On the PDI front, things are going well. Many people have become frustrated with the Atmel XPLAIN boards, as while they offer a cheap way to learn XMEGAs, their touted USB-to-Serial and self-programming functions aren’t quite well baked as of yet. I’ve written on the wonky Atmel USB-to-Serial bridge before – including my LUFA alternative version which by all accounts actually works – but over the last week I’ve been busy trying to get PDI programming all sorted. PDI is the new Programming and Debug Interface used on the XMEGAs and it’s not the easiest thing to use, but I’m getting there slowly. So far I’ve managed to get both bit-bang and hardware USART communications working, enter PDI mode, and manipulate the XMEGAs internal NVM module. Next I’ll be trying to get memory read/writes working.

When done, the LUFA AVRISP MKII clone project will be XMEGA compatible, just like the real AVRISP MKII as of the latest AVRStudio 4 release. Having both bit-bang modes and hardware modes will allow the project to keep the same PDI pinout as the real AVRISP MKII while also supporting an alternative, much faster hardware USART pinout. When compiled for the XPLAIN boards, the code will automatically switch to the hardware USART channel used in the XPLAIN for maximum programming speed.