Atmel debuts new low-power 8-bit tinyAVR MCUs

Atmel has expanded its low-power 8-bit tinyAVR family with the addition of the ATtiny441 and ATtiny841. As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the 8-bit AVR MCUs are ideal for cost-effective consumer applications such as computer accessories, thermostats, personal health accessories and a wide range of Maker projects.

According to Atmel’s Director of Flash-based MCUs Ingar Fredriksen, the new ATtiny 441/841 MCUs boast higher system integration with intuitive tools and peripherals to help facilitate optimized performance with lower power consumption. Indeed, the ultra-low power 14-pin tinyAVR MCUs deliver enhanced analog and communication capabilities for an overall lower system cost in a smaller package.

“Atmel has been the 8-bit MCU leader for more than a decade and continues to think beyond the core, enabling our customers to differentiate their end products,” said Fredriksen. “Our AVRs have been popular since its inception and continue to be the MCU of choice both for professional engineers in consumer and industrial applications and among our 300,000 members in the AVR Freaks community consisting of engineers, hobbyists and Makers.”

As Fredriksen notes, the ATtiny441/841 devices are powerful MCUs packaged in a small form factor. More specifically, the new ATtiny441 and ATtiny841 MCUs feature an uber-mini 3×3 QFN package and 4 and 8KB of Flash memory, respectively.

“The new devices offer enhanced analog performance, including an ADC with calibrated multilevel internal analog reference, with 12 ADC channels on a 14-pin device, two independent USARTs with wake-up from power down without data loss, SPI interface and an I2C slave interface for enhanced communication capabilities,” Fredriksen continued. “In addition, the devices feature flexible clocking options, including a ± 2% internal oscillator with fast wake-up, which allows the UARTs to communicate without the need of an external crystal and wake-up from sleep without data loss.”

As expected, the ATtiny441/841 devices are fully supported by Atmel Studio 6, the integrated development platform (IDP) for developing and debugging Atmel ARM Cortex-M and Atmel AVR MCU-based applications. Simply put, Atmel Studio 6 IDP offers devs a seamless, easy-to-use environment to write, build, simulate, program and debug applications written in C/C++ or assembly code using the integrated GCC compiler and AVR assembler. AS6 also provides easy access to the online Atmel Gallery apps store and Atmel Spaces, a cloud-based collaborative development workspace allowing the designer to host software and hardware projects targeting Atmel MCUs.

To help accelerate devs and Makers accelerate ATtiny441/841 AVR MCU designs, the new devices are supported by Atmel’s AVR Dragon Board which can be snapped up at the Atmel Online Store for USD $49. The ATtiny841 and ATtiny441 are also supported by the STK600, AVRONE, JTAGICE mkII, JTAGICE3 and AVRISPmkII development tools.

The ATtiny441/841 is currently available in mass production, with samples that can be ordered here. Readers who are Maker interested in testing their creativity with AVR MCUs (including the new ATtiny441/841 AVR MCUs) may want to check out Atmel’s very own Master Maker Design Contest here.