AVR-Chat

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "Graham Davies" <Yahoo37849@...> wrote:

> I am working on a new product intended to make the AVR Dragon as easy 
> to use and as flexible as the old STK500.

I love the idea of a module like this but what I really want to see if
enough peripherals to make this a good educational platform. For
example, maybe some I2C ports like RTC or Temperature, and some A/D
peripherals such as a POT. Since my idea is to use this for
educational purposes the specifics of the peripherals aren't critical
but they need to be stardard so each board will have the same stuff.

I try to help college students occasionally and the biggest problem
with designing demo programs for them is that there are not well
defined standard hardware boards that common peripherals and also ICD.
They like ICD because it helps them understand the internals better.
The Dragon has ICD but no standard peripherals. Of course we'd have to
agree on one specific MCU, and then a standard set of peripherals that
would allow us to write good demo programs that will work "out of the
box".

There's a steep learning curve that can be minimized with this type of
board-level product.

But they'd also have to be avalable in a pre-assembled format to be
useful to most college students because they usually don't have enough
time in their schedule to assemble their own boards. They will have
some classes that teach that skill but their MCU class is normally not
structured to allow lab time for this purpose.

Eric