AVR Programming: Get Under the Hood of the Avr Microcontroller Family (Make: Technology on Your Time)

I have recently joined the maker movement and started tinkering around with Arduino and other little electronics project. However, despite the how easy it is to write programs using the Arduino language, I really did not like the fact that it is really not pure C and there was some confusing and mixed information about exactly what language the programs are written in. Coming from a scientific background, I am not afraid to get my hands a little dirty, so I decided that I needed to get to the bottom of it.And so enters this book, which was exactly what I was looking for. AVR chips are programmed in C (or assembly, if that's your thing), and this book explains very well how to, and why you might want to, use the various features of the ATMega168 - timers, interrupts, PWM, ADC, I2C, SPI etc etc.It is not exactly for the faint-hearted and will require a fair amount of commitment to work through all of the various chapters. However, it is very rewarding and I feel much more confident diving into the world of microcontrollers. There are just a few small errors, e.g. typos or graphical, that occasionally detract from the message, but overall this book is excellent and I'm sure I will continue to use it for a long time!Also just an FYI, the Python examples are in Python 2, not 3!

In my opinion. the book suits also for engineers to revise or use as a handbook. Just to say to the author is a great job.

This book is perfect for learners and hobbyists written in excellent easy to understand language.I bought different books from other authors but found those rubbish then had to return coz not worth for the money that i spent to learn some electronics.These books from MAKE or Makezine are worth to spend to learn something and also the author is too good. I recently bought their 4-5 books.Extremely recommended.

Good Book, But pee'd off that its free online in PDF format for anyone to downloadShould have checked before i bought it really.Given that individuals who read this sort of stuff are tech savvy anyway, they would know how to download a PDF Reader and read it directly from the laptop.

This is a fantastic book. I have been programming for business software applications for many years, but had never done any microcontroller programming or electronics. This book has opened up a whole new world, and I am now surrounded by flashing lights, horns, switches and buttons and really enjoying it. I have learned loads and am only half way through, but this is enough to have written a voltage meter and a basic pwm control application for a small electronics business. Each chapter guides you through the steps to build up a circuit for the project, and then goes through the code explaining how it is all working. The book is very well structured so you are not overloaded with information, just given what you need for each topic. I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs to learn how to program a microcontroller.

It's not often I buy a book and find it tick's all of the boxes but this one does. Well written with a sense of humour built in.

This is an outstanding book if you want to have practical fun with ATMega 168 microcontrollers and understand a little further "under the covers" than working with an Arduino (for example). It took me a little time to get my first burn of the microcontroller up and running, but fantastic, practical learning. Very, very pleased. Thank you.

One of the most engaging books I have. I never really understood this at university. Had I had this book my career might have taken a different path.

The book is well-written and relatively easy for a non-techie to understand. It may be a bit dated now given its subject and the publishing date, but its content and approach appears to be highly transferable to current technology requirements. Enjoyable. Amazon delivered the book very fast -- within a couple of days to our rural post office.

The media could not be loaded.

Otimo livro para quem quer sair do arduino IDE e programar com registradores! É uma otima ponte entre as duas linguagens!

With this book, you will learn about programming AVRs, how various components commonly used with microcontrollers work, and be entertained. :-) I'm a C/C++ programmer from way back, however, rather than skipping the asides giving detail or history on an aspect of C, I enjoyed reading what the author had to say, nodding along with agreement. I found the descriptions of how other things (e.g. MOSFETs) work helpful and easy to understand. To cap it all off the projects are fun!

Excellent for getting started programming AVR MCU's.For someone like myself with no microcontroller experience, some general electronics knowledge and lots of programming experience, this book hit the spot. A couple of pointers: - I got the USBTiny programmer from Sparkfun, which works fine with ATmega168's. Just jumper the corresponding pins.- I started with the Arduino IDE, which works as mentioned in the book, but requires some fiddling with boards.txt to get USBTiny to work with atmega's. In the end it all turned out to be more trouble than it's worth. How it builds and flashes is pretty involved and far from transparent. Better to go with WinAVR as mentioned in the book, and just edit your code with good old Emacs. The Arduino IDE gets all wrapped around the axle if you're messing with different processor speeds and baud rates. I never got the USART working right at anything but 9600 baud at 1MHz using the Arduino IDE. It's much easier to just edit the Makefiles, which are very well documented. Also, if you're messing with different AVR chips, you'll want to go this route: the ATTiny chips don't have a USART and the USART.c program doesn't compile for them. You just remove that from the Makefile for ATTiny projects and you're good-to-go. I have no idea what the other reviewer was talking about with WinAVR not working when the Arduino IDE was previously installed on a Windows PC - that was exactly my setup and it worked right away, subject to the following nit:- the avrdude argument -p should be "m168" not "m168p" as stated.- I ran through most of the examples to get going - they pretty much worked as expected.- When I started messing with the ADC, I realized how slow the internal one was and went for a separate chip. The MCP3004 works a lot faster and is fairly easy (and instructive) to interface via SPI. Again, the book does a great job at explaining SPI, and that knowledge translated well.- Another point to note is that some of the projects don't work right if you're connected to the programmer. Rather than plugging and unplugging all the jumpers each time, I attached the programmer to a breadboard with a ZIF socket, and had a separate breadboard and ZIF socket for running, and just shuttled the chip between the two.- Sometimes the book only shows a photo of the breadboard and not the actual wiring diagram. If you have to pick one, the wiring diagram is more clear IMO.I started this about 3-4 weeks ago from ground zero and have gotten through almost the entire book. At this point I feel very confident about working with AVR MCU's going forward.