LUFA 130901 BETA Released!

I had actually forgotten my release procedure – but eventually it came back to me with a bit of mental digging. I’ve now released a new beta of LUFA with the usual two week public stress test, this time with a Atmel Studio VSIX extension as well to upgrade existing installations to the beta version. Please download the new release and try to break it, then email me your complaints so I can fix them up.

This release is mostly a maintenance release; I know it’s been a long while since I made the previous release, but work and other factors means I just haven’t felt like making large changes on the codebase. This release brings the new Mass Storage class and Printer class bootloaders I talked about in previous blog entries, support for a few new first and third party boards, a new XMEGA TWI driver contributed by Michael Janssen, some Python host example code for a few demos and bootloaders, and a bunch of fixes. You can check out the full changelog for the release here.

One major improvement is the porting of all the demos (where possible) to now compile and run on the XMEGA, so I’m now upgrading the port from “experimental – may explode in your face” to “experimental – may contain bugs”. It’s a good step up, and I’ve been testing LUFA on the XMEGAs with great success so far. It’s severely unoptimized due to the API’s design around the AVR8’s USB controller design, but it works well enough in testing so far that I’m not completely embarrassed to have it out in the open.

The other area I’ve been concentrating on is improving the Atmel Studio 6.1 extension, since I’ve got a large amount of feedback that it’s the preferred method of using LUFA now, even with the added “feature”. Apparently my revamped make build system excites only me, alas. I’ve concentrated on several areas:

  • Adding Example Project entries for all the bootloaders
  • Creating a magic transform to convert the LUFA documentation into the format that the Atmel Studio native help system can use (somebody please use this, it took freaking forever to create)
  • Updating the Getting Started page to native XAML for better speed and higher quality
  • Adding Example Project entries for XMEGA architecture devices
  • Restructuring the internal XML modules so that the USB class drivers can be configured to speed up compilation if they aren’t needed in a project (for advanced users)
  • Adding the PC side application code to the various examples inside Atmel Studio, as they were previously available in the standalone package only

Some of the above enhancements made it into a small update I did to the LUFA AS6.1 extension in May to fix a number of small bugs, but they’ve been further tweaked and enhanced in this new version. So what are you waiting for? Download already!

 

This Saturday I was at the local Trondheim Mini Maker Faire, helping out my coworkers inspire a new generation of children into the world of robotics and electronics. Of course, that was the plan until I showed up and realized that I couldn’t speak Norwegian well enough to be useful – so I mostly just rubbernecked around and tried to make sure our improvised line drawing robot (which turned out to be a real hit with the kids, after our attempt to build a line following robot miserably due to sensor saturation from the sunlight) didn’t fall off the table.

The real highlight for me was checking out the Omega Verksted booth full of completely insane(ly brilliant) engineers. From a 3D Snake cube which I sucked at playing to a giant to a somewhat homicidal Automatic Waffle robot, they had it all. Some day in my life I hope to travel to the US and see the real Maker Faire in action.

 

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[…] I expect will take a few days. Not much to report on since most of the relevant information was posted in the beta announcement – other than some additional documentation tweaks (Spelling: I am not good at it). Hopefully […]

 

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Vital Stats

  • 35 Years Old
  • Australian
  • Lover of embedded systems
  • Firmware engineer
  • Self-Proclaimed Geek

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