AVR-Chat

I am currently writing my programs with Bascom-AVR, they turned out 
to 
be rather big (+1400 lines, including +35 subs). It still works and 
is 
admirably simple( though seems a little slow and needs big stack 
size.) 
I am about to add much more code and I am worry if the whole program 
become too slow or reach stack size limit?!

So my questions are: 
1-
Since I don't have very much spare time (as a hobbyist)in learning 
new 
programming language(and my fear of dealing with complex hardware  
details), do you think it is better for me to stick to the Bascom-Avr 
with my growing program size, or not??

2-
If not, what is my best option? I saw good books on teaching 
CodeVision 
in book stores, but I read on the internet that WinAvr has alot more 
piece of code on the net (I used to copy-paste those  pieces to my 
bascom and it was helpful, so more code samples may be decisive)
Which one has less bug and is more common among C programers?

3- 
Is the C language exactly the same for WinAvr and CodeVision? Are C 
and 
C ANSI Identical? (sorry if specially the last question seems very 
basic)

Thanks in advance for ur reply.

It all depends upon your pain threshold.  BASCOM/AVR has got to be the 
easiest development systems for the AVR out there.  Great hardware 
abstraction, good support (The update wizard is a bit testy though) and 
lots of users.  But it is basic.

If you want to move to C then Codevision is the simplest path, it has a 
fully integrated IDE and is pretty decent.  If your pain threshold for 
installing software is very low, this is your path.

However, if you want FREE then AVR-GCC is the way to go.  According to 
at least one AVR FAE that I've talked to the AVR-GCC compiler generates 
code nearly as efficiently as IAR, and did I mention that GCC is free?

AVR-GCC will integrate directly into AVRStudio for a full IDE or (I 
think this is still being supported) has Winavr for a less full featured 
IDE.  You can use it command line if you so wish as well.  AND, this is 
my favorite, You can put AVR-GCC into the Eclipse IDE with an AVR 
Eclipse plugin and get a nice IDE as well.  But, this latter will take a 
couple of hours fiddle time, with help 30 minutes.

There are other compilers out there but they are either more primitive 
or quite expensive.

DLC

Behrooz wrote:
> I am currently writing my programs with Bascom-AVR, they turned out 
> to 
> be rather big (+1400 lines, including +35 subs). It still works and 
> is 
> admirably simple( though seems a little slow and needs big stack 
> size.) 
> I am about to add much more code and I am worry if the whole program 
> become too slow or reach stack size limit?!
> 
> So my questions are: 
> 1-
> Since I don't have very much spare time (as a hobbyist)in learning 
> new 
> programming language(and my fear of dealing with complex hardware  
> details), do you think it is better for me to stick to the Bascom-Avr 
> with my growing program size, or not??
> 
> 2-
> If not, what is my best option? I saw good books on teaching 
> CodeVision 
> in book stores, but I read on the internet that WinAvr has alot more 
> piece of code on the net (I used to copy-paste those  pieces to my 
> bascom and it was helpful, so more code samples may be decisive)
> Which one has less bug and is more common among C programers?
> 
> 3- 
> Is the C language exactly the same for WinAvr and CodeVision? Are C 
> and 
> C ANSI Identical? (sorry if specially the last question seems very 
> basic)
> 
> Thanks in advance for ur reply. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 

-- 
-------------------------------------------------
Dennis Clark          TTT Enterprises
www.techtoystoday.com
-------------------------------------------------

At 08:47 AM 20/01/2008, you wrote:
......

Well I don't really know all the answers, but winAvr is free,
Codevision is only free for small projects (code size limited)
otherwise it will cost you money.

No 2 C compilers are the same, so the portability thingy is
not really 100% true. You will have to do some changes to
the code to take it from one compiler to another, or at least
that seems to be the case to me.

Codevision is preferred by some people as being more professional,
others are happy with the efforts of "volunteers" that maintain
winAvr/GCC.

winAvr integrates directly into Studio, CAVR is a bit more fiddly
for debugging with Studio.

Others will shed more light on the subject I hope.


Regards

John Samperi

********************************************************
Ampertronics Pty. Ltd.
11 Brokenwood Place Baulkham Hills, NSW 2153 AUSTRALIA
Tel. (02) 9674-6495       Fax (02) 9674-8745
Email: john@ampertronics.com.au
Website  http://www.ampertronics.com.au
*Electronic Design * Custom Products * Contract Assembly
********************************************************

Behrooz wrote:
> I am currently writing my programs with Bascom-AVR, they turned out to 
> be rather big (+1400 lines, including +35 subs). It still works and is 
> admirably simple( though seems a little slow and needs big stack size.) 
> I am about to add much more code and I am worry if the whole program 
> become too slow or reach stack size limit?!
> 
> So my questions are: 
> 1-
> Since I don't have very much spare time (as a hobbyist)in learning new 
> programming language(and my fear of dealing with complex hardware  
> details), do you think it is better for me to stick to the Bascom-Avr 
> with my growing program size, or not??
> 
> 2-
> If not, what is my best option? I saw good books on teaching 
> CodeVision 
> in book stores, but I read on the internet that WinAvr has alot more 
> piece of code on the net (I used to copy-paste those  pieces to my 
> bascom and it was helpful, so more code samples may be decisive)
> Which one has less bug and is more common among C programers?
> 
> 3- 
> Is the C language exactly the same for WinAvr and CodeVision? Are C and 
> C ANSI Identical? (sorry if specially the last question seems very 
> basic)

If you search the archives, you'll find codevision has some very fundamental
parts of C unimplemented. Do the same tests to see if it's been fixed (it's
been broken for 5+ years).

> From: Behrooz

So you can evaluate my comments below, I am an Electrical Engineer (minor in
computer design) by training but spent my professional life as a software
developer (now retired) developing software for large communications/message
switching applications in financial networks.

I have a (hobby) interest in process control, communications, home
automation, etc. and selected the AVR as the family that best addressed my
needs.

So, with that intro, ...

> ....
> So my questions are:
> 1-
> Since I don't have very much spare time (as a hobbyist)in learning
> new
> programming language(and my fear of dealing with complex hardware
> details), do you think it is better for me to stick to the Bascom-Avr
> with my growing program size, or not??

In my opinion you will usually pay a code size/speed penalty for the 'ease'
that some higher-level languages (like Bascom-AVR) provide.  A lot of what
they are doing for you is taking care of 'details' for you but they
sometimes have to do it in a 'general' way so as to satisfy the needs of a
variety of users.

I don't think that C would be much more difficult for you than structured
Basic, especially because you now have a level of familiarity for what the
AVR can do and how programming in the AVR environment works (edit, compile,
simulate, burn, test, etc. ...).  You also now have a familiarity with
program flow, etc. that you didn't have before.

I would recommend that you give C a try with some small test programs and
then try converting your Bascom application.

The biggest 'learning curve' area will probably be in initializing the
various hardware devices and (if you want to use them) getting familiar with
interrupt-driven code.  I'm not familiar with Bascom-AVR but I assume it
hides many of these details from you.  You will quickly develop (or acquire
from this list and other Internet sources) code snippets that you can use
over and over.

Once you know C there isn't anything you can't do on the AVR except some
very specialized things (like task switching in an RTOS).  Even those you
can do with WinAVR by dropping into assembler when you want to explore more.

> 2-
> If not, what is my best option? I saw good books on teaching
> CodeVision
> in book stores, but I read on the internet that WinAvr has alot more
> piece of code on the net (I used to copy-paste those  pieces to my
> bascom and it was helpful, so more code samples may be decisive)
> Which one has less bug and is more common among C programers?

When I got into the AVR I purchased (and recommend) "Embedded C Programming
and the Atmel AVR" by Barnett, Cox & O'Cull.  It seems to cover everything
without being too "high level" or getting you lost in a lot of detail.  It
is written to be used with CodeVision but I use WinAVR.

For beginning, I'd recommend WinAVR (free) used with AVR Studio (free from
Atmel), a development board of your choice and the "Ice-Cube" Jtag device
from ECROS Technology
(http://www.ecrostech.com/AtmelAvr/AvrIceCube/index.htm).

AVR Studio will provide you framework to develop, compile, simulate, burn
and test your programs as well as set breakpoints, step, etc. in the target
system for debugging (using the Jtag device).

This is what I did in the beginning.  Because my work is getting a little
more involved (RTOS's, Ethernet, etc.) I am now transitioning away from AVR
Studio to tools that come with WinAVR like Programmers Workbench (IDE-like
environment), AVRDude (burning, etc.), DBG (debugger), etc.

> 3-
> Is the C language exactly the same for WinAvr and CodeVision? Are C
> and
> C ANSI Identical? (sorry if specially the last question seems very
> basic)

Unfortunately there are some differences between the available C compilers
for the AVR (WinAVR, CodeVision, ImageCraft, etc.) particularly in the area
of bit fields, registers, interrupts, etc. and they all have their own
libraries with varying amounts of 'extras' so programs are slightly
different from compiler to compiler.

All of the software components I suggested (AVR Studio, WinAVR) are free, so
if you don't like them you can throw them away and it didn't cost you
anything :-)

> Thanks in advance for ur reply.

Well, my advice may be worth what you paid for it (i.e.: 0) but I'm sure
others on this list will jump in if I've led you astray :-)

Cheers,

Chuck Hackett
"Good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment"
7.5" gauge Union Pacific Northern (4-8-4) 844
http://www.whitetrout.net/Chuck

> From: Behrooz

So you can evaluate my comments below, I am an Electrical Engineer (minor in
computer design) by training but spent my professional life as a software
developer (now retired) developing software for large communications/message
switching applications in financial networks.

I have a (hobby) interest in process control, communications, home
automation, etc. and selected the AVR as the family that best addressed my
needs.

So, with that intro, ...

> ....
> So my questions are:
> 1-
> Since I don't have very much spare time (as a hobbyist)in learning
> new
> programming language(and my fear of dealing with complex hardware
> details), do you think it is better for me to stick to the Bascom-Avr
> with my growing program size, or not??

In my opinion you will usually pay a code size/speed penalty for the 'ease'
that some higher-level languages (like Bascom-AVR) provide.  A lot of what
they are doing for you is taking care of 'details' for you but they
sometimes have to do it in a 'general' way so as to satisfy the needs of a
variety of users.

I don't think that C would be much more difficult for you than structured
Basic, especially because you now have a level of familiarity for what the
AVR can do and how programming in the AVR environment works (edit, compile,
simulate, burn, test, etc. ...).  You also now have a familiarity with
program flow, etc. that you didn't have before.

I would recommend that you give C a try with some small test programs and
then try converting your Bascom application.

The biggest 'learning curve' area will probably be in initializing the
various hardware devices and (if you want to use them) getting familiar with
interrupt-driven code.  I'm not familiar with Bascom-AVR but I assume it
hides many of these details from you.  You will quickly develop (or acquire
from this list and other Internet sources) code snippets that you can use
over and over.

Once you know C there isn't anything you can't do on the AVR except some
very specialized things (like task switching in an RTOS).  Even those you
can do with WinAVR by dropping into assembler when you want to explore more.

> 2-
> If not, what is my best option? I saw good books on teaching
> CodeVision
> in book stores, but I read on the internet that WinAvr has alot more
> piece of code on the net (I used to copy-paste those  pieces to my
> bascom and it was helpful, so more code samples may be decisive)
> Which one has less bug and is more common among C programers?

When I got into the AVR I purchased (and recommend) "Embedded C Programming
and the Atmel AVR" by Barnett, Cox & O'Cull.  It seems to cover everything
without being too "high level" or getting you lost in a lot of detail.  It
is written to be used with CodeVision but I use WinAVR.

For beginning, I'd recommend WinAVR (free) used with AVR Studio (free from
Atmel), a development board of your choice and the "Ice-Cube" Jtag device
from ECROS Technology
(http://www.ecrostech.com/AtmelAvr/AvrIceCube/index.htm).

AVR Studio will provide you framework to develop, compile, simulate, burn
and test your programs as well as set breakpoints, step, etc. in the target
system for debugging (using the Jtag device).

This is what I did in the beginning.  Because my work is getting a little
more involved (RTOS's, Ethernet, etc.) I am now transitioning away from AVR
Studio to tools that come with WinAVR like Programmers Workbench (IDE-like
environment), AVRDude (burning, etc.), DBG (debugger), etc.

> 3-
> Is the C language exactly the same for WinAvr and CodeVision? Are C
> and
> C ANSI Identical? (sorry if specially the last question seems very
> basic)

Unfortunately there are some differences between the available C compilers
for the AVR (WinAVR, CodeVision, ImageCraft, etc.) particularly in the area
of bit fields, registers, interrupts, etc. and they all have their own
libraries with varying amounts of 'extras' so programs are slightly
different from compiler to compiler.

All of the software components I suggested (AVR Studio, WinAVR) are free, so
if you don't like them you can throw them away and it didn't cost you
anything :-)

> Thanks in advance for ur reply.

Well, my advice may be worth what you paid for it (i.e.: 0) but I'm sure
others on this list will jump in if I've led you astray :-)

Cheers,

Chuck Hackett
"Good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment"
7.5" gauge Union Pacific Northern (4-8-4) 844
http://www.whitetrout.net/Chuck