Micropendous boards are OpenHardware Development Boards for Atmel's USB AVR Microcontrollers with a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) hardware, firmware, and software development platform. They are designed for USB peripheral development but can also be used as general purpose USB-programmable microcontroller development boards.

If you are new to USB AVR development, start with the QuickStart guide.

Which Distribution do I download? The older Micropendous-2009-10-11 Distribution has higher Virtual Serial Port throughput than the latest version which has more firmware examples and support software.

Features¶

Other variations are possible and more designs exist, including the Micropendous1-SIL which is designed for DIY prototyping. Note the USB AVRs are not rated to run at 16MHz at 3.3V.

Common Features¶

• USB 2.0 Full Speed (12Mbit/s)
• USB powered
• standard USB Mini-B connector
• all I/O pins are accessible
• Vcc_Sel jumper selects 5V or 3.3V operation on the 8MHz boards
• RESET and HWB buttons to enable firmware loading over USB (no external programmer needed)
• HWB can be used as a user button in your applications
• completely OpenHardware Design, schematic/layout/BillOfMaterials/assembly instructions available for Open Source KiCAD. Gerber and other technical files can be recreated.
• works with Open Source LUFA USB firmware library and Open Source LibUSB software library, or with Open Source PySerial library if using USBVirtualSerial-based firmware.
• Linux + AVR-GCC + LUFA + LUFA Bootloader + KiCAD + DFU-Programmer allow you to develop Open Source and/or Open Hardware projects around a Micropendous board without ever touching proprietary software.

Firmware Examples¶

Can be found in the latest release or via SVN.

• LUFAduino - Program your Micropendous board using Arduino-style code. Uses the preemptive FreeRTOS kernel to allow multi-tasking and the use of delays without interfering with USB functions.
• SRAM_Test - Test the external SRAM on a board which supports it. For SRAM Usage information see SRAM Usage Tutorial.
• USBVirtualSerial-FreeRTOS - USB Virtual Serial communication example with preemptive FreeRTOS kernel.
• USBVirtualSerial - USB Virtual Serial communication example
• LoopBack - Custom-Class USB device communication example
• AVRISP - LUFA AVR ISP mkII clone AVR programmer
• BootloaderDFU - LUFA Bootloader for the USB AVRs
• MassStorage_MMC_SD_via_SPI - Mass Storage device demo using MMC or SD card connected in SPI mode
• MicropendousKeyboardTest - Keyboard demo to test pin connectivity. GND'ing pins types their name.
• SpeedTest - firmware and software to test USB throughput
• USBVirtualSerial_ADC - Get the current value of ADC pins using serial port software
• USBVirtualSerial_I2C - Virtual Serial Port to I2C interface
• USBVirtualSerial_LCD - Virtual Serial Port to HD44780 Character LCD interface
• USBVirtualSerial_SPI - Virtual Serial Port to SPI interface
• USBtoSerial - Virtual Serial Port to UART interface

External Projects¶

• opendous-jtag - simple USB-JTAG interface
• Bitlash-USB - interpreted language shell
• userial - USB to I2C/SPI/GPIO bridge
• More Project Links