AVR-Chat

Hi all,

I just received a Butterfly as a promotional product from Atmel.

battery was dead.  Not that I look a gift horse in the mouth, but it
did ruin the surprize.

And, there was no real anything for instructions with it.

Of course I want to play with it and make it go beep and have it make
some LED's dance.....

is there a Butterfly group that would help me get started ?

Is there any free software to play with for it ?

Dave

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, Dave Hylands <dhylands@g...> wrote:
>
> Hi Dave,
> 
> > Of course I want to play with it and make it go beep and have it make
> > some LED's dance.....
> >
> > is there a Butterfly group that would help me get started ?
> >
> > Is there any free software to play with for it ?
> 
> Atmel has a quick start user's guide on their website
> http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=3146
> 
> There is also a book out that covers the butterfly:
> http://www.smileymicros.com/
> I see that they have a free QuickStart guide for using WinAVR with
the Butterfly
> 


Wow, that sure seems like a neat place to start for software.

The ECROS board also looks good for a means of accessing the thing.


I did notice the huge hunk of cardboard, pushed the little toggle this
way and that, pulled the battery, tested it an it was less than 1/2
volt.  The spec's of the AVR say it cannot run on 1/2 volt, so, I
figure the battery was dead.

Odd, because batteries typically have a couple years shelf life. 
maybe I should have tested the resistance of the cardboard....


Dave

Dave Mucha said:
> Hi all,
>
> I just received a Butterfly as a promotional product from Atmel.
>
> battery was dead.  Not that I look a gift horse in the mouth, but it
> did ruin the surprize.

Did you remove the piece of cardboard that disconnects the battery?

>
> And, there was no real anything for instructions with it.
>
> Of course I want to play with it and make it go beep and have it make
> some LED's dance.....
>
> is there a Butterfly group that would help me get started ?

Google for something like "gcc butterfly port"

Also you might want to purchase the Butterfly carrier at:
http://www.ecrostech.com

Mike

Hi Dave,

> Of course I want to play with it and make it go beep and have it make
> some LED's dance.....
>
> is there a Butterfly group that would help me get started ?
>
> Is there any free software to play with for it ?

Atmel has a quick start user's guide on their website
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=3146

There is also a book out that covers the butterfly:
http://www.smileymicros.com/
I see that they have a free QuickStart guide for using WinAVR with the Butterfly

--
Dave Hylands
Vancouver, BC, Canada
http://www.DaveHylands.com/

--- Dave Mucha <dave_mucha@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I just received a Butterfly as a promotional product
> from Atmel.
> 
> battery was dead.  Not that I look a gift horse in
> the mouth, but it
> did ruin the surprize.
> 
> And, there was no real anything for instructions
> with it.
> 
> Of course I want to play with it and make it go beep
> and have it make
> some LED's dance.....
> 
> is there a Butterfly group that would help me get
> started ?
> 
> Is there any free software to play with for it ?
> 
> Dave

Those batteries are supposed to have a 3 or 5 year
life (I'm going by memory, so watch out!).  Make sure
you've removed the paper tab keeping the battery from
making connection.  I thought my battery was bad, too.

No, I haven't found any real software to run on it.

HTH,

Jeff Engel
Arlington, TX


Happiness is - positive intake manifold pressure.


		
__________________________________ 
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, Jeffrey Engel <jengeltx@y...> wrote:
>
> --- Dave Mucha <dave_mucha@y...> wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I just received a Butterfly as a promotional product
> > from Atmel.
> > 
> > battery was dead.  Not that I look a gift horse in
> > the mouth, but it
> > did ruin the surprize.
> > 
> > And, there was no real anything for instructions
> > with it.
> > 
> > Of course I want to play with it and make it go beep
> > and have it make
> > some LED's dance.....
> > 
> > is there a Butterfly group that would help me get
> > started ?
> > 
> > Is there any free software to play with for it ?
> > 
> > Dave
> 
> Those batteries are supposed to have a 3 or 5 year
> life (I'm going by memory, so watch out!).  Make sure
> you've removed the paper tab keeping the battery from
> making connection.  I thought my battery was bad, too.
> 
> No, I haven't found any real software to run on it.
> 
> HTH,
> 
> Jeff Engel
> Arlington, TX
> 
> 
> Happiness is - positive intake manifold pressure.
> 


The cardboard came out upon opening, it was verified when I pulled the
battery the first, second, third, fourth......  about 20 or more times
playing with it, looking for a pos or neg indication.

no plastic wrap. 

the battery tests bad.


Yes, I too thought that the battery should last 3 or more years in
storage, and maybe that long when used in a power conservatin mode.

And, it is a SONY SR2450, so I would expect that the brand name would
be a decent battery.

Dave

another question, 

If one pulls in data strings, say, reads 40 sensors and then wants to
log them.

does the dataFlash on the Butterfly allow incremental writes or does
it need a block write ?

Also, if the data is strictly temperature from an LM34 (or some such)
I assume the temperature could be logged as 56.78 or 5678 ?

then if each system scan were preceeded with the time, then points,
there would not be any need for actual point references, the final
shpreadsheet could add the header and fill in the columns.

so, each line might be 

12:00:01 5678 5688 5777 (and so on)
12:01:01 5677 5692 5888 (and so on)

and be repeated for all 40 points.

would that be written after each scan, or would a whole memory block
have to be written ?

how do I calculate how much memory would be used for the on-board
dataFlash ?  


= = = = =



Also, the timing.  Timing is not critical.  on a micro with a crystal,
the internal timing can be accurate to better than a minute a week. so
a RTC might not be required.

ideally, one would pull the DC card and install a new one, press the
START button and a single line of day, date, time and whatever would
be the first line of the file, or even the file name ?

Anyone know just how accurate the timing is on a Butterfly ?  can I
get a week or more from an interanl timer ?

Dave