Vegard Wollan on the AVR and ARM cores and peripherals

In the fifth video of the series, I asked the co-inventor of the AVR microcontroller about the progression of the peripherals in the various microcontrollers Atmel offers. Vegard shares that when they invented the first AVR products, the team was concerned with ease-of-use, a clean instruction set that would run C, instructions that ran in a single cycle, and good quality tools.

However, he was just as proud of the peripherals that they then developed for the XMEGA line of AVR 8-bit chips. There, he said the stress was still on low power, but also a set of peripherals that were high performance, robust, strong, effective, and that included analog and digital advanced peripherals. Additionally, Vegard stressed how the XMEGA event system would allow programmers to handle complex events and take action, all without waking up the CPU core in the part.

Vegard Wollan becomes animated when talking about the peripherals in AVR and ARM chips offered by Atmel.

I knew this was cool for the low-power aspect, yet Vegard reminded me that it also allows you to service an interrupt faster and more deterministically — always a good thing in embedded systems. The great news for engineers is that all the cool things Atmel figured out for the XMEGA AVR also went into to the UC3, the 32-bit AVR product lines. Then, we made sure to put these same powerful and flexible peripheral systems into our ARM core-based MCUs. In addition we would add dedicated touch I/O pins and more accurate clocks and references. You can still see the AVR DNA from back in 1990 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology where the AVR came to life.

What I really loved about Vegard was his humility. Every time I tried to give him credit for the AVR he was sure to remind me that there was a whole team that developed it. And, when I tried to point that the AVR was RISC (reduced instruction set computer) before ARM came out, he told me that he was more proud of the peripherals in all of Atmel’s chips, rather than just the core he invented for the AVR. That’s a good thing to keep in mind.

While using any ARM core will get you the instruction set and header files and open-source tools, Atmel’s ARM chips will also get these great peripherals and the event system to tie them all together, while the CPU sleeps peacefully. A recent article helped me understand Vegard’s Norwegian modesty, but I am sure glad he and his team worked on the AVR and ARM chips.

Lights, cameras, drones! FAA approves use of UAVs for film

This week, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has taken a big step forward on drones: It has authorized six filmmaking companies to use unmanned aircraft.

In an effort that marks a giant milestone for commercial drone use in the United States, the FAA granted each of the six companies waivers from regulations on general flight rules, pilot certification and equipment mandates designed for traditional aircraft as long as they meet certain conditions for safety. The agency is currently working with a seventh company on a similar drone approval and has at least 40 additional waiver requests pending for commercial use of UAVs, The New York Times reports.

While the FAA has previously approved commercial drone use for Alaskan oil operations, FAA’s decision is certainly the first exemption of its kind. Now, the companies will be permitted to fly small drones equipped with cameras on closed sets; though, the FAA did say the aircraft must be inspected before each flight and may only be operated during the day, while any accidents or other related incidents must be reported.

As the Washington Post writes, the civil drone industry has been pressuring the FAA to relax that ban and to develop new regulations designed to safely integrate UAVs into the country’s air traffic system. “While we’re still waiting for those formal rules, the FAA is now saying that making movies with drones, or TV shows, or advertisements, or anything else you might do on a closed production set, is legal — so long as you can prove it’s safe.”

This decision will surely pave a path towards more approvals for drone use throughout agriculture, industrial inspections, real estate, as well as countless other cases — many of which are listed here.

The FAA shared that it is in the process of evaluating requests from nearly 50 companies, including Amazon, who last month teamed up with 3D Robotics, DJI Innovations and Parrot to form a small UAV coalition aspiring to represent commercial uses of drones, establish a code of conduct and educate the public about benefits of the technology.

“There has been a lot of interest around this technology lately, and I have determined that using unmanned aircraft for this purpose does not pose a risk to national airspace users,”  stated Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

UAVs have been popular choice among Hollywood producers, particularly given their ability to fly and capture otherwise unimaginable shots. Believe it or not, there have already been several box office hits that featured drone footage (taken from locations outside of the U.S.), including Star Trek: Into Darkness, The Hunger Games and The Dark Knight Rises. 

“We shot Fast & Furious 6 over in Moscow, and we’ve been up in Canada,” explained Preston Ryon, Co-Owner of Snaproll Media LLC, one of the recently-approved companies. The other companies who received drone use exemptions included Astraeus Aerial, HeliVideo Productions LLC and RC Pro Productions Consulting LLC.

Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, proclaimed that the FAA’s exemption mark “an important day for the [film] industry that will create a climate where more production is done at home.”

It’s safe to say that Hollywood’s exemption is merely the beginning. As these drones — many of which are powered by Atmel AVR microcontrollers — continue to become more affordable, accessible and easier to use, we can expect a future that’ll be both autonomous and airborne. With more than 15,000+ DIY drones ready to take flight,

 

 

3D printing expands to 100 UPS Stores across the U.S.

If you recall, UPS announced plans to bring 3D printing to several UPS locations last year; now, the parcel service is expanding the program to nearly 100 stores throughout the United States.

The service, which first rolled out in San Diego-area locations, was marketed toward “startups, entrepreneurs and small business owners.” According to UPS, the 3D printing service will enable companies to quickly and inexpensively create models and prototypes of items they plan to produce.

Following a six-market trial period, the decision was based on a high-demand for 3D-printing options — which is certainly in line with growth in the industry. As previously reported in Bits & Pieces, 3D printing is set to soar with analysts forecasting the industry to reach $16.2 billion by 2018 – representing an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45.7% from 2013 to 2018.

UPS’ 3D printing effort is a partnership between the shipping company and Stratasys, the parent company to the well-known MakerBot who first began using Atmel AVR microcontrollers in its early printers like the Replicator 2.

“We launched the pilot to evaluate if there was demand for 3D print and we’re excited to be announcing an expansion, giving even more small business owners access to high-quality, professional 3D printing,” explained Michelle Van Slyke, VP of Marketing & Sales at The UPS Store. “We look forward to being a part of the future of the 3D printing industry.”

While the UPS did not provide a timeline for when the 3D printing project would be completed, there are currently 45 stores nationwide up and running with 3D print services. Kentucky, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania are among the states first receiving 3D printer-equipped stores, while an entire list of all other future stores can be found here.

Evident by the sheer number of up-and-coming machines in Maker Faire New York’s 3D Printing Village, the movement is gaining traction with Makers, entrepreneurs and corporate giants all hopping aboard.

In May 2013, Staples began selling 3D printers in its stores across the U.S., while the Microsoft Store also invested in 3D printing last year by expanding its MakerBot partnership to 18 locations where shoppers were able to see, demo and even purchase MakerBot 3D printers. The United States Postal Service even looked into the next-gen technology, which could potentially serve as a financial boon for the government agency. Most recently, Amazon launched a 3D printing store back in July, which offered customers the option to customize various thingamajigs like bobble head dolls and jewelry, and then have them shipped.

Evident by the growth of large companies’ presence at recent Maker Faires, this trend will only continue. Unsurprisingly, nearly 60% of enterprises have already or will soon begin using or evaluating 3D printers — a majority of which are powered by AVR XMEGA, megaAVR and SAM3X8E MCUs.

Vegard Wollan on AVR Freaks and early data books

In the fourth episode of my interview with Vegard Wollan, the co-inventor of the AVR MCU alluded to the passionate following that Atmel and its 8-bit chip have developed.

I can personally attest to this. When one of my pals said he was “going off the reservation” to solve an AVR problem, I thought he meant he was going to use a certain competitor’s microcontroller. Turns out, he was simply referring that he was headed to Atmel’s AVR Freaks forum to get an answer, rather than put in a support ticket or use our knowledge base. What delighted me was when he said, “I would rather jump off a bridge than use a [competitor] part.” Simple as that.

Atmel recently rolled out a redesigned site for the die-hard community, which incorporates both feedback and testing provided by the users themselves. Aside from the new look, the site will utilize a much more robust infrastructure and web technologies to provide users with an enhanced experience. (For those seeking an avid community built around the Atmel | SMART ARM-based products, you can check out AT91.com.)

What I loved about the interview is how Vegard explained it was his college experience that convinced him of the value of a strong user community. We all remember those 3:00am dorm sessions where we would discuss the meaning of life. Vegard noted that Atmel would provide servers and gifts and anything else we could do to support the user community.

The co-inventor also brought along a few copies of the first AVR data book. I was amused to see this post on the AVR Freaks forum, by a user that did not know what a “data book” was. Boy, that makes me feel old! See sonny, back when the Earth was still cooling and dinosaurs roamed the fields, engineers didn’t do everything at their fingertip on the intertube. Companies, much like Atmel, would take all their datasheets and bind them up in this thing called a printed book. I have to admit, it was a great day when I tossed my 500 pounds of databooks in the dumpster. Bless the Internet, it made life so much better.

Vegard Wollan holds up the draft version of the May 1995 AVR databook.

Of course, that draft was only a checkplot for the real book. The video also shows Vegard holding up the final version of the AVR databook that us old-timers so frequently depended on. How we would have killed for the modern microcontroller selector guide!

Here, Vegard Wollan holds up the actual printed data book from May 1995, the first release of the famous AVR microcontroller to the world. They had to make some changes so this databook has parts listed that Atmel never actually produced, and was missing some other parts. Those 4-months printed book lead times were a killer for everybody.

So there you have it, folks. With billions of chips in the wild, a following of over 290,000 AVR Freaks and nearly 100,000 forum posts around the topic annually, it’s safe to say we’ve come a long way since the earliest days of the 8-bit microcontroller. If you’re not already a member of the growing AVR Freaks community, be sure to head on over to the newly-updated site and join today!

Watch out for those snake robots!

Every engineer loves robots, it’s one of the few disciplines that mechanical, electrical, and software engineers all admire. There is a class of robots called snake robots due to their means of locomotion resembling the way a snake works. One such robot , Wheeko, was recently unveiled by the folks at NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the self-same place that Vegard Wollen, the inventor of the AVR microcontroller chip, attended before starting at Atmel.

Wheeko, a snake robot developed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

When I asked a Norwegian co-worker if Wheeko might have Atmel microcontrollers in it, he was not sure about Wheeko, but pointed out and earlier robot at NTNU, the Anna Konda was run by eleven mega128 AVR chips.

The Anna Konda was intended as a fire-fighting robot that could crawl through burning or collapsed buildings. There are other applications as well, anywhere that a robot has to work in confined spaces.

So whether Wheeko goes to Mars or his little sister crawls through your veins, you can bet there will be a snake robot in your future.

New 3DR investor Richard Branson explains why everyone’s talking about drones

Earlier this year at CES, the show described 2014 as “the year of the drone.” With good reason, too. In just the last month, we have seen Google unveil a new drone delivery system, Disney reveal several patents seeking to use UAVs around theme parks, a number of drones being used to inspect bridge safety, as well as the Pentagon announce a new drone base in Africa.

(Source: 3D Robotics)

Globally, drone spending is expected to increase from $6.4 billion this year to $11.5 billion annually a decade from now. Furthermore, Amazon recently came together with several makers of small UAVs, including 3D Robotics, DJI Innovations and Parrot, to create a coalition in hopes of accelerating the development and use of these unmanned vehicles in coming years.

Most recently, Chris Anderson brought six drones to Necker Island, as the 3D Robotics Co-Founder met up with English business magnate, Sir Richard Branson, to discuss the endless potential for drones.

(Source: 3D Robotics)

The Virgin Founder wrote in his blog:

“It’s amazing to see just how many useful applications exist for drones. A few weeks ago, I was deeply saddened to hear that rhinos are being airlifted away from Kruger National Park in South Africa because of the continuing threat from poaching. Over the last 40 years, we’ve lost 95% of the world’s rhinos; this year alone, more than 400 rhinos have been poached in Kruger. Kruger is roughly the size of Israel, an area too vast to police effectively on the ground alone. Here, drones could become a powerful instrument to monitor and track poachers. Already NGOs, researchers and even Google are supporting various projects using drones to tackle the problem.”

For many, the term “drone” seems to conjure images of military use and war weaponry. As a result, the mere thought of these futuristic flying devices tends to pose security and privacy concerns to several people. When, however, UAVs used for defense purposes and those that may one day may buzz around the skies are quite different, and in fact, may change the world — for the better. According to Anderson, the (AVR-powered) DIY drone community will soon have more than 15,000 drones flying, compared to some 7,000 drones in use worldwide by military forces. Martha Stewart, known by many for her expertise in and around the home, has also shared her love for these flying robots in an essay that appeared in TIME Magazine, writing that drones could be “a useful tool.”

“As is the case with all technology, we have a choice. We can design and use drones to make the world a better, safer, fairer and more fun place. Or we can use them to create further divisions between people,” Branson urges.

In the video below, Virgin and 3D Robotics share some of the positive ways we can use ‘drones for good’ and how these UAVs are already being used around the world. Interested in reading more? Soar on over to Virgin’s official page to learn more about their #Drones4Good campaign. While you’re at it, check out these 18 ways the next-gen flying apparatuses can provide benefits to society.

UPDATE: 3D Robotics has officially announced that Richard Branson has become the drone maker’s latest investor.

“I’m really excited about the potential 3DR sees in drones. They can do a lot of good in the world, and I hope this affordable technology will give many more people the chance to see our beautiful planet from such a powerful perspective,” says Branson.

Vegard Wollan reflects on AVR and Arduino

In this segment of my chat with Vegard Wollan, the co-inventor of the AVR explores the symmetry between the highly-popular microcontroller and the Arduino development board.

Personally, one of the great moments was when Vegard revealed that the entire AVR product line was meant from the start to be easy-to-use. This began with the instruction set, the architecture and continues to this day with things like Atmel Studio 6 integrated development environment (IDE), Atmel Spaces collaborative workspace, and Atmel Gallery, the place where you can find thousands of code samples and tutorials.

Vegard Wollan gestures to the AVR schematics as he explains to Paul Rako how ease of use was a primary design goal from the start.

So it is only natural that Arduino was built on this foundation to make their great ecosystem of development boards and their wonderful IDE. You can see Vegard truly appreciates and respects how Massimo Banzi made the entry into AVR programming even easier for both technical and non-technical folks alike.

Today, AVR 8-bit MCUs (as well as Atmel 32-bit ARM®-based MCUs) power a variety of Arduino’s easy-to-use boards including:

• Arduino Uno: The most “standard” board currently available, the Uno is based on the ATmega328. 
• Arduino Yún: The Yún is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega32u4 (datasheet) and the Atheros AR9331.
• Arduino Nano: The Nano is a small, complete, and breadboard-friendly board based on the ATmega328.
• Arduino Mega 2560: The version of the Mega released with the Uno, this version features the ATmega2560, which has twice the memory, and uses the ATmega 8U2 for USB-to-serial communication.
• Arduino Leonardo: Based on the ATmega32u4, the Leonardo is a low-cost Arduino board, featuring the same shape and connectors as the Uno board but with a simpler circuit.
• Arduino Micro: The Micro is based on the ATmega32u4, developed in conjunction with Adafruit.
• Arduino Esplora: Derived from the Arduino Leonardo, the Esplora is a ready-to-use, easy-to-hold controller based on the ATmega32u4.
• Arduino LilyPad: Powered by an ATmega32u4, the LilyPad is designed for wearables and e-textiles, allowing for the board to be sewn into fabric and similarly mounted power supplies, sensors and actuators with conductive thread.
• Arduino Due: Based on an Atmel ARM Cortex®-M3 processor-based MCU — also known as the SAM3 MCU — the Due board is ideal for home automation projects and can run up to 96MHz.
• Arduino Wi-Fi Shield: Built for Wi-Fi applications, the Arduino Wi-Fi shield is powered by the Atmel AVR UC3 MCU and an H&D wireless module, and provides developers a powerful Wi-Fi interface.
• Arduino Zero: The board is powered by an Atmel SAM D21 MCU, which features a 32-bit ARM Cortex® M0+ core.

If you haven’t had the chance to tune-in to all of Vegard’s 1:1 interviews with the Atmel Analog Aficionado, you can check ’em out here.

Resurrecting a Macintosh Plus from the dustbin

Stuart Cording, an Atmel aficionado over in Europe, tipped me off to this blog where a fellow got his old Mac Plus up and running. Jeff Keacher had the typical hardware problem, a power supply capacitor blew on him after a short while. What was amazing is he also got it to connect to the World Wide Web.

Jeff Keacher got this 27-year-old Macintosh computer up and running and then got it to browse the web.

My buddy Alan Martin over at honored competitor Texas Instruments has a saying “It’s always a cap”. With old radios and such it is the large can electrolytic that dry out. They stop filtering the wall voltage so you then hear a bad hum in the output. Eventually they “punch through” and blow up. For test equipment, Alan often comments on how great it was that Tektronix used all those “lemon drop” tantalum capacitors, since they all fail and make it easy to buy really good test equipment really cheap. Then you just replace all the tantalum and electrolytic capacitors. Like the old Macintosh, you can always find a suitable replacement at Digi-Key, or one of the other distributors. I have described how Eric Schlaepfer over at Google manages to put a new capacitor in the original can, so the gizmo still has that classic vintage took to it.

This is the X-rated capacitor that failed in the Mac Plus.

The cap in the Mac was an X-cap, a film capacitor that is rated for long life and designed to be across line voltage, the 120AC in your house. It is a little disturbing that it failed, film caps don’t dry out like electrolytic. I know some of my pals use a Variac to slowly bring up the line voltage the first time they power up old equipment. I hear that doing that is less stressful to the capacitors and you can see things smoking at a lower voltage so you might not do as much damage.

My analog aficionado pals bring up old equipment with a variac like this. That way you are applying voltage to the input capacitors with a slow ramp-up.

Now there was quite a hardware and software challenge to get the Mac Plus on the web. I think it was a bit of a cheat to use a Raspberry pi. Heck the pi will run Linux and has a video system. Why not just toss the Mac Plus in the garbage and connect a monitor the Raspberry pi? Well, sure, anybody can do that. So the author solved the hardware problem letting a Raspberry Pi be the middle-ware between the Mac and the Web. But there was still plenty of fun putting in a TCP/IP stack and a browser and all the other fun coding they had to do to get a web page to render. Bravo, now I think I will listen to that Merle Haggard song about Fords and Chevys lasting ten years like they should.

9 fun facts about the world’s first smartphone

Long before the days of the iPhone and Android came Simon, the device that started it all. The world’s first smartphone turned 20 this week, and to commemorate the occasion, TIME Magazine compiled several fun facts on the handset that broke the mold. Simon anticipated our constantly-connected, app-happy lives by cramming the features of a cellphone, pager, fax machine and computer all into an 18-ounce device.

1. IBM and BellSouth first debuted Simon on November 23, 1992 at the COMDEX Convention in Las Vegas, but it wasn’t made available to consumers until August 16, 1994.

2. It was expensive, and rightfully so. The device that set the pace for future smartphones was available only in the United States, and initially set buyers back $899.

3. Alright, so it was a brick. The clunky phone itself measured 8 inches long by 2.5 inches wide by 1.5 inches thick, all while weighing over a pound.

4. Yes, it had a touchscreen. Though touchscreens weren’t exactly non-existent back in the early 1990s, they weren’t super ubiquitous either. The IBM device replaced the usual telephone keyboard by a sensitive touchscreen and integrated PIM applications and data communication features along with a stylus, too. The phone provided an onscreen keyboard or a QWERTY keyboard and an optional memory card.

5. The world’s first all-in-one smartphone allowed users to make and receive telephone calls, faxes, emails and cellular pages, among other functions. Though there may not have been an app store at the time, the phone did come preloaded with apps such as an address book, calculator, calendar, note pad, sketch pad, time and to-do lists.

6. The first autocorrect? Alright, so the feature was called “PredictaKey” at the time. Nevertheless, Simon always showed the six most-likely letters that the user needed, depending on the characters they just typed.

7. Simon even made an appearance in The Net. 

8. It could be plugged into a regular wall jack, because let’s face it, cellular service was still spotty and expensive back in the mid-1990s.

9. RIP, Simon. August 1994 – February 1995. The revolutionary handset spent only six months on the market with around 50,000 units sold, primarily to business people.

10 famous left-handed Makers

Today, August 13th, is International Left-Handers Day. To celebrate the occasion and the 10% (or so) of the population who favor their left hands, we’ve decided to highlight 10 famous southpaws.

1. President Barack Obama

2. Bill Gates

3. Leonardo Da Vinci

4. Nikola Tesla

5. Albert Einstein

6. Isaac Newton

7. Charles Darwin

8. Benjamin Franklin

9. Henry Ford

10. Neil Armstrong