AVR200 Project board / Single Board Computer family, in production

The $A99 AVR200 kit, ($A185 built and tested) is a low cost ATmega32 based board for industrial/educational/hobby applications. Protected I/O is provided from all ports to screw terminals and it also provides a RTC, SPI, RS232, buffered I²C bus (and RS485 option).

The first part of the kit release features in June Silicon Chip (Australia) magazine P84/91.

It is available both, built and tested, or as a kit at $A99 inc GST for the standard build.

It is all through-hole construction and easy to build without SMT hassles.

See: AVR200 pages

The AVR580 "Little Blue Computer"

This board has the following features (on a production run, we can drop parts not needed to save money):

• 8 Analog inputs, 0 to 4.096 volts, 10 bit resolution, ADR292 voltage reference. All inputs have socket area for pull-up resistor to 5 volts, load resistor to ground (e.g. 200 ohms for 4-20 mA load), or a pair of resistors for voltage dividers. All inputs are protected with series resistor and clamp diodes to ground and 5 volt rail to protect the CPU. These inputs can also be used as digital inputs direct to CPU, by reading the A port in parallel. (Option: 8 more FET drivers in place of analog in);
• 8 FET outputs, using MTD3055L power FETs for drivers. (Option: inputs with pull-downs in place of FETs);
• 10 Digital inputs, 5 general purpose to gate array, 5 to AVR (T0, T1, Int0, Int1, ICP), all inputs with series resistor and Zener protection, pull-up or pull-down resistors (user changeable). "Pull-ups" allow inputs to be switches or optoisolators to ground, and "Pull-downs" allow for voltage inputs, with 3 to 30 volts reading as a "1" ;
• 8 Dip switch inputs (address, option setting);
• RS232 serial port, choice of DTE or DCE configuration to D9 on card edge. This port powers itself from RS232 input signals, so when no external device is plugged in, there is no power consumption in the RS232 port. Thus at least one input (e.g. DSR, DTR, RTS as a high input is needed, as is the TX line;
• RS485 serial port, on three pin screw terminals (A, B and Gnd);
• Dallas 1-Wire (iButton) supported with two-pin screw terminal, lines protected;
• I²C supported by software driver (8535) or CPU I²C hardware (ATmega163). Connected to four-pin screw terminals, providing SDA, SCL, Vcc and Ground. I/O is protected by Zener diodes. If these pins are not used for I²C, they can be used for general purpose I/O;
• 14-pin ribbon cable connector for CPU FLASH and EEPROM memory reprogramming (using JED, STK200, STK300 or Kanda standard parallel port adapter);
• Optional LCD display and keyboard scan connected via above 14-pin connector and ribbon cable, communicating via SPI, saving serial port or parallel ports for other functions;
• DataFLASH memory (8-pin) optional for data storage. This allows the board to store gathered data in a non-volatile chip. Linkable for 5 or 3.3 volt devices. Device sizes are 128K Byte to 2 M Byte. Communication with DataFLASH is via SPI controller in AVR CPU;
• Real-Time-Clock device (option), using Dallas DS1305, battery backed with a Lithium battery. CPU has alarm outputs which can be linked to CPU interrupt or can operate an on-board power FET in series with system power, so board can be powered OFF and ON under CPU/RTC control. Again, an essential feature for data logging applications;
• Power ON/OFF switch, power-on LED and two LEDs (red and green)  programmable as status LEDS allow for communications or system status indications. Switched power (Vcc 5 volts) output for CPU control of sensor power, can save power between readings. CPU can also drop consumption by switching to idle mode, waking on interrupts. Board has on-board low dropout regulator, and can run from 5.5 to 20 volts in;
• ISP expansion port (via programming 14-pin connector) to AVR581 LCD display/keyboard encoder, or user-designed SPI expansion boards;
• Internal 10-pin expansion port for extra memory, etc;
• On-board Coolrunner (Zero static power) Xilinx® CPLD3 gate array (XCR3064XL or XCR3128XL) handles 8 digital outputs and 10 digital inputs, and allows users to customise the card by loading special code into the CPLD (e.g. counter prescalers, latches, combinatory logic, etc. Development software (schematic entry or VHDL) is available free from Xilinx at www.xilinx.com or on CD from Xilinx distributors. Device can be altered via programming socket on board, using serial or parallel Xilinx (or Altera ByteBlaster®) download cable. (The board is shipped with a standard peripheral expansion pattern, available in source form for user alteration.) Attention TAFE and University Electronic Engineering schools: this feature makes the AVR580 an ideal board for student projects where CPU and CPLD design, and AVR programming and board customising are taught.
• The AVR CPU be simulated and programmed in ASM (using free tools from Atmel), in C or in BASIC. We recommend CodeVision's C compiler after a lot of in-house use at JED. See: CodeVision.

The AVR580 is in production. If you are interested in discussing it, please contact Ed at eschoel@jedmicro.com.au

The Xilinx gate array data is at: XCR3064XL
Atmel data sheets for the CPU options on this board are at: Atmel Data Sheets
You can download and print a pdf file showing detailed layout of this board: 580v1bit.pdf

AVR585 "Little Purple Computer", with three Com ports.

This is a similar sized board to the AVR580, but uses an ATmega128 CPU, and with a dual UART (ST16C2550CQ48), offers a total of three RS232 serial ports, an RS485 port, an iButton 1-wire port, and LCD/keyboard/download port, as well as a large Xilinx SpartanXL gate array and 16 general purpose I/O lines. Call/email JED if you are interested. Here is a complete data sheet and drawing:  AVR585DS.pdf.

AVR575, a "Little Ozzie Logger", (or a very simple but smart, controller board)

This little 3" by 4" board is designed as a small data gathering device, either saving the data in its internal 1 Mbyte of EEPROM, or 64 Kbyte of Ramtron FRAM and uploading to a PC on request, or connected to a PC/modem/GSM phone as a permanent or intermittent data gathering device sending data to a PC or remote base via the RS232 serial port.

It uses an ATmega32 CPU and has eight, 10-bit analog or switch/voltage digital inputs with signal scaling and line termination/pullups, and can also have four other I/O pins which can have power FETs as outputs, or be simple inputs. It also has a Dallas/Maxim 1-Wire interface for transducers or memory devices. The serial port can be link-selected to be a TTL level serial port (to talk to Radio transceivers) or can be a 2-wire RS485 interface, allowing multiple AVR575 boards to be spread along a 4000 ft cable, maybe connected to a PC via a JED 995X RS232 to RS485 converter.

Options include a real time clock (with alarms for turning power on and off), and RS485 networking capability.

A different board loading adds a 4 by 20 or 2 by 20 LCD text display and a keyboard scanner for a 4 by 4 (or larger) keyboard. In this application, it might fit into a distributed display/data-entry/data-gathering application on an RS485 network or via a GSM phone or modem. Imagine factory monitoring, security systems, remote flow metering, temperature monitoring/control, etc etc. 

See the drawing of the board: AVRbits.pdf and a detailed description of the board : AVR575.pdf.

It can be programmed in BASCOM BASIC or Codevision C, or AVR asm.

This 47mm square module has an ATmega128 surface mounted CPU, a reset chip, a CPU crystal, an optional DS1305 Real Time Clock with back-up battery and four rows of pins to connect to either your custom designed base board, or our AVR572 proto board or the AVR573 board below. In full production, at a VERY good price. (Note: we normally ship with a 3.6864 Mhz crystal, but other values, eg 16.000 Mhz are available on request.)

The AVR570 is now available with options of ATCAN128 (CAN bus) or the new ATmega2561 CPUs (with 8K instead of 4K RAM).

Datasheet, with mounting dimensions: AVR570.pdf, Schematic, 570v0sch.pdf, and full page PCB layout: 570Bits.pdf

AVR573 base board for AVR570: Data sheet available

This 160mm by 100 mm board is an all-through-hole base for the AVR570 module, and has 8 analog in, 1-wire in, 12 digital in to the CPU, 4 outs from the CPU to power FETs and 8 other FET outputs from an addressable latch.

It can drive an LCD display and scan a small keyboard in a way compatible with BASCOM or CodeVision compilers.
It can have a GPS module or an expansion board added to an extension area, and has two RS232 or one RS232 and one RS485 port.

Data sheet: AVR573DS.pdf,  here is a large photo:  AVR573.JPG and an annotated pcb bits layout: 573v0bits.pdf

AVR572 prototype base board for AVR570, board $A40, kit $A60 +GST

This is a base for users making one-off application board, or prototyping a system which will use the AVR570 module in production, or even for TAFE student or hobby projects.

Across the top are spaces and pads for six 5-way Phoenix 0.15" spacing screw socket connectors.
Across the bottom are double-row 0.1" spaced pads for ribbon cable connectors with solder pads for each pin for wiring just above them.
Vcc and ground tracks cover the board, and there are hundreds of dual-pads for ICs or discrete components.
At the left-hand end is wiring for a 5 volt linear voltage regulator and a MAX208E 4 TX, 4 RX chip for the two serial channels.
(Available as just a PCB or as a low cost kit with essential components like the voltage regulator and heat sink, the MAX208E RS232 chip and socket strips for the 64 AVR570 pins.)

AVR-ISP mkII, In-System Programmer for all AVR microprocessors, in stock, $A75 + GST

The AVR In-System Programmer is used for field upgrades of existing products using the Atmel AVR Architecture. The In-System Programmer is based on the STK500 Hardware and Software. It supports all in-System Programmable AVR devices. It is supported by all AVR compilers (CodeVision, Imagecraft C, BASCOM, AVR Studio). Because it runs from the PC USB port, it avoids problems with printer port modes (ECC, Std, etc) and operates under all PC operating systems with USB support.

It is supplied with a 6-pin programming cable, so is suitable for all the recent JED boards and modules shown above.

(Because a 10-pin cable header is not provided, there is a problem in interfacing to older boards with the 10 pin ISP header, or boards like the JED 585, which has a 14-pin connector, formed by adding 4 extra pins to the Atmel 10-pin standard. We are quite unhappy that Atmel has dropped the 10-pin support without any warning, and will soon make available an adapter board to convert the 6-pin cable to the 10 and 14 pin standards. Contact JED for availability.

A full data sheet is available for download at: AVR-ISP mkII user guide

Note: The older serial RS232 port AVR-ISP is no longer available. It has been suddenly deleted, without warning by Atmel.

AVR assistance from JED

If you are interested in using AVR processors for any project, small or large ... email or call Ed Schoell at eschoel@jedmicro.com.au with your comments or questions. (03 9762 3588)

JED offers a design service for boards or systems based on AVR, Xilinx gate arrays and a range of other electronic hardware and software projects. We have a group of standard circuit and gate array design modules, with matching software drivers developed during our time creating the Little Blue Computer and friends and we have designed a number of custom systems based on AVR using this experience. 
 
 

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(Updated Oct 7th 2009)

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