Hi,
I'm recently the owner of the easyAVR 5 development board by mikroelektronika. Because I am a Mac user, I wanted to program this board through mac. I installed everything, but the programmer (avrdude) does not support the easyAVR boards. Is there someone who has a solution to this problem? I can develop my C and hex files on my (with Xcode) but i cant program my MCU (on mac). I hope you can help me.
greetings,
frederik
I assume that avrdude will NOT work on a Mac. I thought that a Mac does not have a parallel printer port (centronics).
If the Mac does have a parallel AND if avrdude is available on the Mac:
You make a suitable cable for the MISO, MOSI, RST, SCK lines from the EasyAvr5 board to the PC port.
You will need to check the docs for your board and the Mac port. Also read the tutorial on ISP parallel programming. It is probably wise to place a small RC filter in the SCK line.
It is preferable to have a buffer chip in between the AVR and the PC but not essential if your cable is short.
If you have a STK500 then you can connect your Easy board to the STK500 with the suitable cable. The STK500 should connect to the Mac via the RS232. Then avrdude can drive the STK500. The STK500 has the required buffer chip.
David.
Ah now you didn't mention Mac in your post about using the Easy AVR 5 (which I think is really 4) in the studio 4 forum.
Like I said there the board:
http://www.mikroe.com/en/tools/e...
has its own, on board USB2 based ISP programmer
but that's a proprietary design of Mikroe and, as such, I think it can only be driven by their own software. I don't think even the ubiqutious avrdude will have knowledge of how to drive it (though if it did it ought to work in OSX just as well as it works in Linux or Win32)
I see that Mikroe have "AVRProg2 software for Windows" (http://www.mikroe.com/zip/avrprog2_programmer.zip) but I see no sign of a Mac/Linux version. I wonder if the Windows one can be made to work under Wine or Bootcamp (or whatever that Mac thing is called)? Either that or approach Mikroe and ask what plans they have for OSX/Linux versions of the programmer software.
But if no other solution presents itself maybe it's just easiest to get an AVRISPmkII ($34) or a Dragon ($50)
Cliff
Hi,
as told before it really is the easyavr 5 board :).
AVRdude does support some USB programmers but not the one from mikroe. I was just wondering if anyone already has written some code for avrdude which has the definitions of the programmer that is on the easyavr board. Sorry for my difficult English, i hope you understand my problem.
Anyhow, thanks for the fast responses, and i hope there will be a mac-solution for my easyavrboard soon.
greetzz, frederik
Wow, the easyAVR4 didn't last long, glad I returned mine.
I think the protocol over the USB is going to be proprietary to Mikroe so (unless someone has a USB protocol analyser) I don't think anyone but Mikroe could add the necessary support to avrdude but they are presumably happy with their existing GUI software (though the fact that it seems to be tied to Windows might persuade them to either do the avrdude work or at least openly document the protocl they use so that someone else could do the work)
Bottom line, you really are best asking Mikroe about non-Win32 support for their programmer.
Ok I think I have two options then:
Or i will beg mikroe to support MAC
Or i will stick to windows for my avr projects.
Nothing to do about that. Thanks for your responses
greetings
frederik
I assume that avrdude will NOT work on a Mac. I thought that a Mac does not have a parallel printer port (centronics).
It's interesting that the EasyAVR5 does not appear on Mikroe's website, but it appears others are having problems using it at all. See:-
http://www.mikroe.com/forum/view...
Looks to me like yet another product released before it's ready.
Jim
Yes i had this problem too. This was because they changed some things about the easyavr board layout, but they had not changed their programmer. Today they released v 2.10 of their avr flash programmer and that would solve the problem with cant sync device with programmer. But i didnt find any time to test the new programmer.
F.
YES finally
I also have an easyAVR5 board and with a lot of problems trying to synchronize it with an atmega16
ant yes with the new flash programmer v2.10 the problem is solved
only not fair from them that after my remark several times they say it is my probem with drivers, knowing it is their driver that doesn't work
But I am very glad now and can go on experimenting
regards zuran
I think the protocol over the USB is going to be proprietary to Mikroe so (unless someone has a USB protocol analyser) I don't think anyone but Mikroe could add the necessary support to avrdude but they are presumably happy with their existing GUI software (though the fact that it seems to be tied to Windows might persuade them to either do the avrdude work or at least openly document the protocl they use so that someone else could do the work)Bottom line, you really are best asking Mikroe about non-Win32 support for their programmer.
I have looked on Mikroe's forums about Linux support for the USB programmer on the EasyAVR4/5, but it looks unlikely they will release non-Windows support since that would mean people wouldn't buy their Windows only compilers, and would just use avr-gcc. They have responded with "soon" for several years now. Apart from that, the EasyAVR is a great dev kit.
Today I got sidetracked looking into the USB spec after again searching for Linux options with the EasyAVR, and spent a couple of hours looking at porting the USB driver to Linux.
For a USB protocol analyser, I used SnoopyPro (don't let the Pro confuse you, it's open source) and sniffed a huge amount of packets to analyse. At the end of the day I'd started on a simple 'shell' program so I could replay the programmer's USB transactions using the libusb library, which is installed with my Ubuntu distro.
When I took a look at the source, it looks like libusb is available for BSD and Darwin kernels so it should be possible make a userspace port to Linux and OSX. I hope to finish it sometime in the coming month or two.
You can read my initial analysis on my blog http://www.scriptforge.org/2008/05/sidetracked-porting-easyavr-programmer-to-linux/. I found that communicating with USB devices very straightforward on Linux and libusb may be useful in future projects.
It's great to see that your are trying to find out how the mikroE programmer ist configured.
I hope that in the future it could be possible to build in the mikroE programmer syntax into avrdude or similar flash tool, so it's getting more handy.
I also bought an EasyAVR (got mine today) and I am thinking of getting a AVR jtag adapter to use the avr-gcc stuff (at least for now).
Keep up your investigations. If I can do anything for you, let me know.
Cheers,
Daniel
Sounds to me like the "easy"AVR is anything but! :)
I think I would just gut the ISP programmer on the EasyAVR and plant the hardware pits to support an Atmel supported ATAVRISP-MK2.
The_Village_Idiot and I had this discussion, back when he first took delivery of his EasyAVR. Back then, he was so disgusted with the EasyAVR, that he sent it back, even though I offered a trade for it.
It was my intention to do exactly that - gut the EasyAVR ISP from the thing and add the hardware to support the Atmel ATAVTISP-MK2 programmer. This might be an approach you might want to consider, as well.
I figure it'll be about 2 hours work clearing all of the unnecessary components, then a couple hours to lay-out and make an adapter PCB that supports an ISP header.
What would might have been a better approach for the EasyAVR, would to have designed a board with all of the trinkets and bells & whistles, and simply provided the standard STK500 IDC 10-pin I/O and ISP headers.
Oh, the STK500, what a jewel it is!!!
The only thing I would change from Carl's recommendation would be to use the 6 pin ISP header instead of the 10 pin one, since the new programmers from Atmel are 6 pin only (including the AVRISP-mkII), you will need an adaptor for 10pin.
Well, I did call out the ATAVRISP-MK2, which does use the 6 pin programming header.
The 10 pin headers that I referenced were aimed at the standard 10 pin IDC I/O headers bringing the AVR PORT pins out to the user interface.
I have tried the other way around.
I have sucessfully done the first programming with
AVRStudio 4 + WinAVR
using AVRProg2 (from MikroE) on the EasyAVR5
Additional programming and debugging with
AVRStudio 4 + WinAVR + Olimex AVR JTAG + EasyAVR5
works like a charm :-)
I am definately happy with the setup. If we could utilize the onboard programmer to work with an open source tool like AVRDude, would be perfect, but even in this current setup, I am very pleased.
Cheers,
Daniel
