Maker Pro
Maker Pro

Professional AVR development board/programmer and IDE needed

Could anyone suggest a programmer or development board suitable for programming AVR's that is compatible with a professional IDE? The requirements are:

The total cost ((board XOR programmer) AND IDE) must be under £50, I am willing to spend more if the suggestion is an outstanding product.

The IDE must be a C++ environment. No machine code and no Arduino.

Must be compatible with at least one AVR (mega or tiny) with code size of 8kb or above.

The AVR must be removable and usable independently, preferably not SMT, however if the chip is SMT I am sure that I can break it out for a DIP package.

Most importantly: the software must have extensive documentation.

I believe the above are the only requirements. A few months back at my local hackspace a man from GE suggested a TI MSP430 development board, the launchpad, I made the purchase however he has not been present at the space since, I am thus unable to use the board without extensive reading of various documents due to unrecognised pre-processor directives (#use fast/standard_io, or something along those lines). AVR's are what I have used so far in the form of Arduino and these are what I am comfortable with.

I look forward to the suggestions (if anyone can find something that matches these requirements!),
 

Harald Kapp

Moderator
Moderator
As for the IDE, check ATMEL Studio. It is free and easy to use. Also install the free WinAVR for programming to add the capability of programming in C and C++. The AVR runtime library used by WinAVR is documented here.
The programming hardware you'll find online in various flavors for a few €, £, $ ...

This setup can be used with any AVR in-system or on a breadboard.

The STK500 and STK600 are complete eval boards - but don't fit your purse :(
The AVR Dragon may come near. It contains a very small" prototyping are" (essentially just a header for placing a socket for an mcu). You can e.g. mount a ZIF socket there.

I recently bought a pair of cheap Arduino Pro Mini clones (without the Arduino bootloader) that can directly be programmed using an in-system programmer and come with built-in voltage regulator and quartz oscillator. All you need is a breadboard and a 5V supply to get them running.

Also "MAKE: AVR Programming" is a good introduction into low-level AVR programming (but doesn't use the Atmel IDE but command-line and Makefile based programming instead).

Cheers,
Harald
 
Top