Programing AVR on Ubuntu with USBasp for beginers

/ August 17, 2014

Microcontroller is a small chip on a computer. AVR is one of the microcontroller families  developed by Atmel. One main reason for getting such a fame for AVR is the availability of a large number of free and open source development tools compared to other similar microcntroller families. Arduino, the most famous open hardware platform among hobbies, also use AVR as its processor (in most of their boards).

Followings are some of the tutorials written in this site about Arduino

This tutorial is about how to program an AVR using USBasp programmer on Ubuntu (I am using 14.04.1 now).

Requirements

  1. PC running on Ubuntu (14.04.1)
  2. USBasp programmer
  3. Atmel ATmega 32A chip connected to the USBasp programmer properly and some LEDs connected to it for verifying (This is a guide on how to connect USBasp to an AVR)

Installing software packages

In order to start programing AVR you require some tools such as a compiler, libraries, programmer (downloader), linker, asembler, etc.  We'll install,
  • gcc-avr (compiller)
  • binutils-avr (set of tools such as assembler, linker)
  • avr-libc (C libraries specifically made for avr)
  • avrdude (software programmer)

In the terminal window, run this command

sudo apt-get install gcc-avr avrdude avr-libc binutils-avr

In case of fedora

dnf install avr-gcc avr-binutils avr-libc avr-gdb avrdude

Writing your first for AVR program on Ubuntu

Open your favorite editor and type following code, and save it as led.c

#define F_CPU 1000000UL

#include <avr/io.h>
#include <util/delay.h>

int main(void) {

 DDRC = 255;

 while(1){

 PORTC=255;
 _delay_ms(200);

 PORTC=0;
 _delay_ms(200);
 }

 return 0;
}



Creating a Makefile


It is a good idea to have Makefile for compiling the c code. Download and extract Makefile
file and use the Makefile available inside the archive. This make file was generated MFILE tool under windows 7. Copy Makefile and led.c file to a given folder and run following command on the terminal
make all


You can use "make", "make all", "make clean" and "make program" commands


Downloading the firmware


We use avrdude for downloading the generated hex file to the device. Connect your USBasp programmer to the computer and the microcontroller. Then run following code for downloading,


sudo avrdude -p m32 -c usbasp -e -U flash:w:led.hex


in above code -p followed by m32 is for part number ATmega 32A; -c is for providing  the programmer's name (hardware programmer); -e is to erase the device before programing;  -U is to provide progrming location (in this case flash in write (w) mode has been selected)


Refer avrdude Linux man page for more information

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