When starting a microcontroller project, sooner or later there's
the question of how to get the code into the chip. The protocols
are usually vendor-specific and very often there's no "nice" way
to bridge the gap between PC and the microcontroller board.
With Ben and UBB, we have an excellent tool for this: the Ben
offers the friendly environment of a Linux system and with UBB it's
easy to build adapters that plug into the microcontroller circuit.
Since we already have quite a number of Ben-based in-circuit
programmers, I thought of making a little overview of them. Most
are quite simple, and in fact it's so easy to write a basic
programmer on the Ben that I rarely even try to find and port one
that may exist somewhere else.
These are the Ben-based programmers I know of at the moment:
- Atmel ATmega/ATtiny (tinyAVR/megaAVR)
- SiLabs C8051F32x/C8051F34x (8051)
- Microchip PIC18F2xJxx/PIC18F4xJxx (PIC18)
- NXP LPC111x (ARM Cortex M0)
Has anyone else made one ?
Below is a list with more details. Each entry in the list has the
name(s) the family of chips is usually known by, the name of the
Ben-based programmer and where the source lives, an example project
that uses this chip, links to a picture of the board and to the
source, and finally a picture of the programming adapter and a link
to its design files (if it isn't simply UBB plus a cable).
Architecture: Atmel ATmega/ATtiny (tinyAVR/megaAVR)
Programmer: avrdude (with Ben-specific patches)
http://www.nongnu.org/avrdude/
http://projects.qi-hardware.com/index.php/p/ben-blinkenlights/source/tree/master/avrdude
Example: atusb (IEEE 802.15.4 USB dongle)
http://downloads.qi-hardware.com/people/werner/wpan/web/800px-Atben_atusb_prod_05.jpg
http://projects.qi-hardware.com/index.php/p/ben-wpan/source/tree/master/atusb
Adapter: atusb-pgm
http://downloads.qi-hardware.com/people/werner/wpan/tmp/atusb-pgm-20110203.jpg
http://projects.qi-hardware.com/index.php/p/ben-wpan/source/tree/master/atusb-pgm
Architecture: SiLabs C8051F32x/C8051F34x (8051)
Programmer: f32x
http://projects.qi-hardware.com/index.php/p/f32xbase/source/tree/master/f32x
Example: labsw (USB-controlled relays)
http://downloads.qi-hardware.com/people/werner/labsw/web/labsw-0-inside.jpg
http://projects.qi-hardware.com/index.php/p/wernermisc/source/tree/master/labsw
Adapter: c2ben (*)
http://downloads.qi-hardware.com/people/werner/f32x/c2ben-run1.jpg
http://projects.qi-hardware.com/index.php/p/f32xbase/source/tree/master/c2ben
Architecture: Microchip PIC18F2xJxx/PIC18F4xJxx (PIC18)
Programmer: picpen
http://projects.qi-hardware.com/index.php/p/wernermisc/source/tree/master/bacon/prog
Example: unpublished prototype (LED effects)
http://downloads.qi-hardware.com/people/werner/tmp/lt-pic-proto.jpg
Adapter: cable directly to board
Architecture: NXP LPC111x (ARM Cortex M0)
Programmer: lpc111x-isp
http://projects.qi-hardware.com/index.php/p/ben-blinkenlights/source/tree/master/lpc111x-isp
Example: tornado (LED effects **)
http://projects.qi-hardware.com/index.php/p/antorcha/source/tree/master/tornado
http://downloads.qi-hardware.com/people/werner/tmp/tornado2-cpu-blink.jpg
Adapter: atusb-pgm
(*) The c2ben is a bit unusual because it has a custom 8:10 card
board instead of using UBB. The reason is that it predates the
industrially-produced UBBs, which means that I had to make a new
board anyway, and I used a design that's a little "optimized".
Today, I would of course just take UBB.
(**) "tornado" is currently transitioning from an ATmega to the
more powerful LPC111x, so code and circuit don't match at the
moment and the circuit hasn't been fully tested yet.
- Werner
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