Homebuilt Hardware

A little tutorial on Atmel AVR Development in Ubuntu with the AVRDragon and STK500. Part 1 describes  hardware setup and interface modes. It can be found here. This tutorial covers the initial setup of the AVRDragon in Ubuntu linux. Most of it is applicable in other Linux distributions. The goal is to show how to set the AVRDragon’s programming mode and connect through the USB port.

I have just purchased www.homebuilthardware.com. This site is basically live now. It is a generic name but eventually I plan to have the Synth-DIY section as a subsection of a more general electronics DIY website. It has been a while since I have completed any projects. In the next few weeks I plan to finish up some modules that are partially complete. I now have all the needed parts to set up the my second cabinet. Last week I received some MOTM bread boards which will do nicely for prototyping some designs.

Over the last few days, I have been thinking about a digital noise circuit. The CD4006 (18-bit shift register) is commonly used but it is becoming difficult to find. Instead, I have written assembly code for a 32bit Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR). This code is programmed in an ATTiny13 8bit AVR microcontroller. The tiny13 runs with an internal clock of 4.8MHz. I have coded two versions; the first runs in self-clocked mode with a 192KHz shift rate and the second uses an external interrupt for the shift clock and this one supports up to 145KHz shift rate (290KHz with a 9.8MHz cpu clock). These two designs offer a low parts count and small footprint noise source. I’ll be updating the project page here after I have tested these and some more ideas.