I was actually quite easy to do it, i expected to be harder. I used the 8 LED board i designed in the avr butterfly starting guide.

Here is the LED’s in action:

Here is a zip archive containing both the source and the compiled hex. The code was written and compiled in AVR studio.

It’s basically the cheapest development board on the market, $21.28 as we’re speaking at Digikey. I choose to start with the AVR Butterfly because it is also featured in all examples in the tutorial I’m reading. The tutorial is easy to follow and i recommend it if you want to start programming AVR’s in C language. You can find it at SmileyMicros.

The tutorial contains all you need to now, but some things are not entirely covered, and other things present incompatibility issues.

When ordering the Butterfly its also a good idea to order some pin headers because they are not included. When you take the Butterfly out of the box it should look like this:

Now it would be nicer if they would of included those pin headers in the package. And here is my Butterfly after i soldered the pin headers.

Another thing that i noticed about this step, is that my Butterfly doesn’t have the LDR, it seems that this version only comes with the NTC soldered on the back, which is also an analog sensor and it should be enough for developing code with analog sensors.

The next important thing that you need to solder is the RS232 cable, because the communication between the computer and the Butterfly is done via RS232.

Hers is a picture of my cable, and how it should be done. (disregard the connector i used, its taken from an old computer case, that’s why its saying turbo sw).

Notice how the RXD and TXD from Butterfly are reversed on the RS232 connector ? That’s because what you transmit here has to be received there. Pay attention on soldering this connector, you will avoid future headaches. But what if you don’t have an RS232 connector on your computer ? the answer is simple you buy a RS232 to USB converter cable, like i did:

I could of done myself the cable using the schematic from this article, but the parts cost more than a commercial cable, not to mention the hours you put in fabricating.

Now about the battery, the onboard CR2450 isn’t gonna last too long with the projects that you’re gonna work with. So its best to build an external power supply. I build mine with 2 x AA-R6 battery holder.

From this step on, you can approach things two ways, either use a breadboard or fabricate PCB’s. I don’t have a breadboard so i had to make pcb’s. Basically its just a board with 8 LED’s, 8 current limiting resistors and some headers for linking it to the Butterfly.

here is the Eagle schematic and board file.

details on how to fabricate the PCB are covered in my DIY PCB Tutorial.

Here are a couple of pictures with the board after being etched and after being assembled. The 8 LED board is going to be used with the Blinky Project.

I also did two small PCB’s for driving an RGB LED, one for a CA version and one for CC version.(Common Anode and Common Cathode). I will use this boards later when i will be experimenting with PWM control.

Here are the RGB LED boards assembled.

And to end this article here is a picture with the USB to RS232 cable connected to the AVR. Now all i have to do is read and learn the next 300 pages from the tutorial.

Now i started working on a lab power supply, i could of just buy one but its more fun to build it. Here is a picture where i just started the assembly. The project should be up soon at my personal projects page.

Here is a picture with most of the parts on the table

As you can use i got 10 5×7 LED matrix’s which i will use in some LED Display projects.

I also got an AVR Butterfly because I’m going trough a AVR Programming Book. By the way i didn’t knew so far that the AVR Butterfly is the cheapest development board on the market(taking to consideration all of its features).

And here is a picture of my stash. I took me a full day to arrange all the parts. Ofcourse i took my time and enjoyed doing it.

The handy Butterfly GPS is a cost-effective system that presents location, date, and time data on its LCD. The system features an ATmega169 and a highly sensitive GPS receiver engine board based on the SiRF chipset. Its amazing what you can do with such a low cost development board.

AVR Butterfly GPS System: [Download Project] – [View Project PDF]

Blind Spot is an area of the road that cannot be seen by the driver while looking forward or through either the rear-view or side mirrors. Such Blind Spot Detection System are already present in many cars.  In this project the ATmega169 uses a high-intensity infrared light to detect approaching vehicles. Although the system works, i would only recommend you build it for testing purposes, not for long therm use. Why not use it for long therm ? Well no one guarantees that the system would not fail.

Blind Spot Detection System: [Download Project] – [View Project PDF]

Here is another useful project based on the Atmel’s AVR butterfly kit. We should define “useful” though, this circuit was designed to trigger almost all Canon SLR cameras from a distance, so first of all you should own a Canon SLR camera and than carry on with the project. The circuit is controlled by an ATmega169 and powered by a 9V battery.

Canon SLR Camera IR Remote: [View Project]

This circuit based on Atmel’s Butterfly Evaluation Kit provides control on the main functions of an electroplating bath, that is the temperature and the current flow. To achieve optimum plating bot the temperature and the current flow play a major role in the electrochemical process, and they have to be kept within a defined range. Basically the controller digitally implements PID algorithms for current and temperature control.

Electroplating Controller: [Download Project] – [View Project PDF]

The High Altitude Rocket Telemetry Payload system is a flexible flight computer for mid- and high-powered model rockets. The ATmega169 based system features a GPS receiver, a wireless data telemetry downlink, and a pass-through bus architecture that enables you to configure a payload for your specific flight goals. For those rocket geeks out there, this might be a interesting project. I do know that most of the rocket parts are buy-ed from the shelves of the hobby stores, but you should definitely try build some of the parts, you will get more satisfaction when you see it fly away with the parts you fabricated.

High Altitude Rocket Telemetry Payload: [Download Project] – [View Project PDF]

This “intelligent” power supply was designed specifically for embedded systems. In addition to its numerous useful features, the ATmega169 based power supply can provide any voltage from 0 to 5 V with 10-bit resolution.

Intelligent Power Supply for Embedded Systems:[Download Project] – [View Project PDF]

The Aircraft Visibility Remote (AviaRy) is an RC lighting system for model aircraft. The ATmega169-based system features a remote keypad that’s connected to the pilot’s transmitter. An on-board controller is connected to the aircraft’s receiver.

AviaRy: remote controlled Lighting Control System:[Download Project 1 2 3] – [View Project PDF]