This weekend, I went to Washington State to visit/help Marla. This was the first time I’ve ever flown without someone I knew. Even though I’m an engineering student and have taken classes where all this stuff is explained, it still amazes me that this stuff actually works.
I got the Digikey order mentioned in the previous post last Friday, and put together the USBtinyISP today. I would highly recommend this programmer for anyone starting out. Not only does the kit give you some experience with building things, it’s about $15 cheaper than the avrisp2 programmer (get some micros with that $15). I managed to get avrdude going and programmed a ATtiny2313 with a precompiled blinky LED program. I got it working after realizing some stupid mistakes I made. Now I’m watching a LED blink. I don’t know who said it first, but there is no other time that would make a person so excited to see and LED blink.
Not really much interesting is going on Just thought I’d update on a few things since people have been asking for it.
I bought the USBtinyISP. It’s a cheap AVR microcontroller programmer (sold as a kit). I already have (more expensive) PIC programmer, but the AVR seem better with the availability of avr-gcc, avr-libc and avrdude (interfaces with the hardware programmer). Having to do any thing with PIC using free software always seems like a pain in the ass (like I can’t find mac or linux software for the programmer I have). Anyway, the AVR assembly seems more to my liking (on the rare occasion that I do some). I haven’t made the LED blink yet as I still need parts (a Digikey order was made the other day), but hopefully next week.
While on the topic of hardware, I wanted to built a cheap kit radio so I could try some homebrew QRP. People have recommended the SW+ 40, along with a few others. I was just wondering if there was any other recommendations? Also, any opinions on the Norcal keyer or any set of paddles?
Recent Comments