Protostack has introduced a development kit for Atmel’s ATmega32 MCU. The kit – which measures 5″ x 3.7″ (127 x 93.98mm) – is made of 1.6mm FR4 and boasts clean routed edges.
As expected, Protostack’s ATmega32 dev kit conforms to the full size protostack form factor, allowing it to be stacked with other full size and half size protostack boards. The silicon also includes a 40 pin AVR development board, ATmega32A-PU microcontroller and power supply components.
Recently, the folks at TronixStuff had a chance to review the kit and came away with a positive impression overall.
“As you can see from the images below, there’s plenty of prototyping space and power/GND rails. The [packaged] parts allow you to add a power supply, polyfuse, smoothing capacitors for the power, programmer socket, external 16 MHz crystal, a DC socket, IC socket, a lonely LED and the ATmega32A (which is a lower-power version of the ATmega32),” the TronixStuff crew explained.
“You can download the user guide from the product page, which details the board layout, schematic and so on. When soldering the parts in, just start with the smallest-profile parts first and work your way up. There’s a few clever design points, such as power regulator – there’s four holes so you can use both ‘in-GND-output’ and ‘GND-output-input’ types.”
In addition, says TronixStuff, the layout of the prototyping areas resemble that of a solderless breadboard with the power/GND rails snaking all around – so transferring projects won’t be difficult at all. Plus, if you need to connect the AVcc to Vcc, the components and board space are included for a low-pass filter.
“It’s a solid kit, the PCB is solid as a rock, and it worked. However it could really have used some spacers or small rubber feet to keep the board off the bench. Otherwise the kit is excellent, and offers a great prototyping area to work with your projects,” TronixStuff concluded.
Interested? The ATMEGA32A Development Kit can be purchased here on ProtoStack for $23.
Atmel | Bits & Pieces 