Comments on: The Atmel STK500 EVB as an Arduino development board

By: admin

admin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:29:52 +0000

@Brio, PB5 is assigned by the developers of Arduino but I think the source code is open source so you could change the assignment and recompile the boot file. My suggestion is to try to let PB5 alone and try to use a different pin for your application though.
Best regards
Alessandro

By: Brio

Brio — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:16:21 +0000

Is there a way to set the serial transmission blinking signal (currently assigned to PB5) to a different pin?

Thanks

By: admin

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 09:40:42 +0000

@Nicholas, the board will be powered by the STK500 wall adapter. The STK500 needs to be connected to the RS232 CTRL port only once when downloading the Arduino bootloader to the board. When done, you will never need the RSRctrl port any more. The 6-pin ICSP connector can be removed for good as well.
On the other hand sketch downloading is accomplished through the RS232 SPARE port as many times as needed to develop/download/debug the sketch.
If the PC is needed for some runtime input/out from/to Arduino (that is when using the serial port communication in your sketch) the communication port will be the “RS232 Spare”. Otherwise the STK500/Arduino can run as a standalone platform.

Hope this helps
A.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Wed, 06 May 2009 09:03:18 +0000

“Now you’re done: you can remove the 6-pin ribbon cable necessary to program the micro and move the serial cable to the other serial port connector of the STK500″

its said that only one serial adapter is required, if i move my serial adapter from RS232 CTRL to RS232 SPARE, i cannot programmed from my AVR Studio anymore. Some advice? Thanks.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Wed, 06 May 2009 08:42:15 +0000

how ill the whole setup look like? the arduino will be powered by USB or ICSP?

By: admin

admin — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:10:23 +0000

Virdi, thank you for your update.
Best
A.

By: avirdi

avirdi — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 09:59:59 +0000

Alessandro,

Thanks for your reply. your instructions are perfect. I figured out the problem: It is a bug in the AVRStudio’s version 4.16build 628. The bug passes the verification process without actually flashing bootloader onto a blank uC.

The patch for this bug can be downloaded from:
http://www.atmel.no/beta_ware/BootProgHotFix.exe

My STK500 is now working fine and I am using an ATmega328 on STK500 (by choosing “Arduino Duemilanove w/ ATmega328″ as the board in Arduino IDE)

I found this out in a discussion on AVRfreaks (http://www.avrfreaks.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=75568&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight)

You can update your instructions to include this. Thank you again for sharing knowledge.

Virdi

By: admin

admin — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 07:58:57 +0000

Ciao A., sorry for not replying sooner but I’ve been pretty busy during the last ten days.
To make sure I didn’t miss anything in my description I followed the steps as descripted one by one and apparently everything is fine.
I also downloaded the blinking LED example sketch ( http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/BlinkingLED ) and it compiled and downloaded to the board and the LED blinks just fine.
You say that with the serial port straight out of the PC it doesn’t work either so it is not the USB to serial converter. I checked the firmware version of my stk500 and it is as follows:
HW 02, FW 02, minor fw 0A (from the bottom of the “info” window of the STK interface of AVR studio.
I’d not go with commands straight from AVRdude as it should work through the STK in first instance.
In the Arduino interface did you select from the “tools” menu the right board (Arduino NG or older w/ATmega168 ) and correct serial port number?
Try connecting PB0 to and LED of the STK500 : when you press reset and the board waits for the data, the LED should blink two or three times then stay on until the sketch has been loaded. If it does your chip is programmed fine with the bootloader so you should concentrate on the Arduino to STK interface. PD0 and PD1 connected on the STK to RXD and TXD RS232 SPARE, the serial cable connected to the RS232 SPARE DB9 connector and PB5 connected to and LED as a wait for download flag. Is the 16MHz quartz in place ?
Please return on this when everything works (or earlier, in case).
Ciao
Alessandro

By: avirdi

avirdi — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:20:26 +0000

Alessandro,

I am still getting the same error. I followed the steps exactly as described. Two things I suspect:

(1) Could it be because I am using a USB to serial adapter? (but it is working with AVR Studio and WinAVR)
– In this case, I will try using another computer with a serial port.

(2) Or because I upgraded my STK500 firmware to 2.0A (from 1.0E)?
– If arduino’s avrdude is having problems with “stk500″ because of firmware upgrade, Can I compile programs using Arduino IDE and push the resulting .hex file using avrdude command line with “sktv2″ option? In that case, what will the command look like?

Thank you,

avirdi

By: admin

admin — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 09:53:32 +0000

Of course you followed all the steps and configured the fuses and lock bits of the ATmega168. You connected the serial port to the “spare” port of the STK500, configured Arduino dev software to connect to the right port ?
The reset button must be pressed once then released I’m not sure moments before or after selecting “download to target” from the menu. Try both cases.
Are you sure You deselected the “div 8″ tick box in the fuses window ? I happened to go nuts before realizing I forgot to do it.
Check every step and you should be OK.
Repeat the programming steps one by one.
Let me know.
Ciao