[time-nuts] PICTIC II ready-made?

[cfo]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:58:26 -0700, Jim Lux wrote:

> On 4/26/12 1:24 PM, Hal Murray wrote:
>>
>> albertson.chris at gmail.com said:
>>> 2) The IDE is written in Java and is portable.  It is truly identical
>>> on all platforms.  Yes it uses gcc but the end user never has to deal
>>> with gcc or even know what gcc is.  Same with saving your code, hit
>>> just puts it "some place" and keeps track of it
>>
>> Do I have to use their particular style/GUI?  Or can I drive it from
>> make, mixing in pieces I like?
>>
>> How is the documentation on the tool chain and libraries?  Are their
>> good man pages?
>>
>>
>>
>>
> 
> The Arduino IDE is NOT make compatible, as far as I know..
> 
The Arduino IDE is basically an advanced JAVA Editor , that hides avr-gcc 
for you.

The IDE part is that it knows how/where to include/look for the CPP 
libraries.

> It's not like a gcc toolchain where you have a separate compiler,
> linker, binhex, etc and utilities..

It uses a 100% standard avr-gcc toolchain as "backend" , and just creates 
the commandline call for using that.
So avr-gcc , avr-as , avr-ar , avr-objcopy etc. are used "behind the 
curtains".

For uploading the program , it uses avrdude. 
And expects a STK-500 V1 (the old protocol) bootloader to be installed in 
the chip.

Make compatible .....
Well it's a bit of a challenge to use make , as you have to tell/teach 
make about the location of the libraries. That the IDE java code already 
knows about .
But it's certainly possible.


As i see it : 
Arduino HW is a standard AVR microprocessor board , that can be used with 
any editor/compiler. The thing that makes the HW Arduino compatible is 
the installing of the bootloader. 
So take any ATmega328 board with a 16Mhz Xtal (The libs expect 16Mhz).
Install the bootloader , add a serial interface. 
And you have an Arduino.

The main advantage of the Arduino layout , is that anyone can walk into a 
RadioSchack and buy one. No soldering required , if one wishes that.

As there is a bootloader installed you don't need to have an AVR-ISP 
programmer , the programming is done via Serial RS-232. So all you need 
is a COM-Port/ttyxx on your pc.

The other advantage is that there are so many premade/downloadable 
libraries out there , that you can make : ie. a PID controller wo. 
knowing much about PID. And you can add a Temp sensor & a LCD wo. ever 
having opened a datasheet.

The disadvantage is that due to the "hiding/hw-abstraction layer" , the 
generated standard librarycode tends to be slow. 
But in many cases ie. a DS1820B temp sensor can only make a measurement 
every 700 ms. So who cares if the 16Mhz "was able to" query it 1000 times/
sec , in optimized C.

But absolutely nothing prevents you to , combine your own "Optimized C / 
asm" code , with the arduino libraries. And get the best from both worlds.

CFO - Denmark
(Bingo on AVRFreaks.net)