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Microcontroller Programming » on flash FILE i/o

April 02, 2010
by sharadgupta7
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I believe that when i write my program to the micro-controller memory, its the flash memory it goes and sits on. I don't know what is there by default in EEPROM memory say the micro-controller which i received in the box from nerdkits.

My question is :

Is it possible to say store a very small file say a.txt (e.g. contains 10 chars only) and read it from my flash program.

The other question is in what ways can i use EEPROM. how can i read/write to it? Is it advisable??

Thanks

April 02, 2010
by sharadgupta7
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Just out of curiosity, i installed AVR studio 4.

One thing which is beating me completely is the AVR programmer. It asks me to select from a list which goes like

AVR One STK600 QT600 STK500 JTAGIC mk11 AVR Dragon JTAG ICE and many more

What are these? Which one should i select for my nerdkit microcontroller? Please help.

April 02, 2010
by Rick_S
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Yes you can. The ATMEGA168 has 512 bytes of EEPROM available. It is a perfect place to store small strings of text. To use the eeprom, you have to include eeprom.h like this:

#include <avr/eeprom.h>

Simply place that line at the top of your program with your other includes.

Then you use...

eeprom_write_byte((uint8_t*)0,234);

To write a byte in eeprom. Where in this example, the zero would represent the location in the eeprom and the 234 would represent the value stored there.

Use...

chek_eep = eeprom_read_byte((uint8_t*)0);

To read a byte from eeprom. Where, in this example, the unsigned int chek_eep would receive the value read from memory location zero.

That's about the extent of my limited knowledge.

Hope this helps,

Rick

April 13, 2010
by BobaMosfet
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It's asking you what ISP to talk to the MCU with. If you don't have a supported ISP, then AVR Studio won't help you.

BM

April 14, 2010
by JKITSON
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Rick

Thanks for your post.... I have been trying to include a calibration routine on the "TRACTOR PULL SLED MONITOR". I need to be able to adjust one variable in my program after the ATmega 128 is installed in the field...

Wow thanks again

Jim

April 18, 2010
by treymd
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On AVR studio and the part where it asks for a programmer...

I am kinda new at AVR studio myself but I have encountered 2 places where that happens.

the first is when you are emulating, I have the AVRISP MKII which I do not believe is capable of any debugging in system , and that is why I believe it does not show up in the emulator list.

However it DOES show up in the programming list when I go to write the bootloader and program the fuses on a real uC.

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