AVR-Chat

Hi Gert,

> Have folks in this group used this board?

I haven't got this Arduino board but I use the Arduino development
environment with some AVR Mega168 hardware I'm developing which is Arduino
compatible.

> They promote this intermediate language to control the MCU. 
> How is that perceived? Is it a benefit? Or does it remove the 
> user from more direct access to machine functionality?

The Arduino environment/language is just a thin layer over normal C/C++
using the AVR-GCC compiler with a special pre-processor that looks after
including header files and supplying the real:

	int main()

Function that then calls the setup() and loop() functions that are exposed
to the Arduino environment.

> Is it 
> possible to 'bypass'
> this language and just use regular assembly programs on this device?
> (is this documented/recommended?)

There is nothing special about the hardware and yes you can just use it with
AVR assembler or AVR-GCC if you want. It has the normal AVRISP header for
programming.

HTH

Alex