When I start working on a microcontroller project, there are some basic things that are nice to haves. Basic things like a serial port for debug messages, a continuously running timer for getting time difference between two points of time(for things like timeout; or delays). Then most of the time, you need SPI, or I2C, or some other peripheral.

Unless you have been using the same platform for some time and have your own personal stash of code snippets to do this, (and unless you wrote then well enough to be reusable with other projects, might still need some work to make it work too) you’ll be doing the same things again and it takes time before you get to do the thing you wanted to do.

Although C++ is not my prferred language for writing code for microcontrollers, I write much of AVR code in C++(except ‘modules’ deliberately written in .c/.h files to make them reusable in other c projects), just to be able to use arduino libraries. This post is to explain the arduino code/libraries build process in some detail and adapting it to one’s favourite tools.

Having used a simple makefile based compilation system which replicated the arduino compilation steps(which I made a long time ago for an internship), I was looking for something a bit more robust and configurable. Found Inotool randmonly and this was exactly what I wanted. Usage is simple, create a file ino.ino to specify configuration(board, serial port, baud etc.).

A sample config file could be like:

[build]
board-model = yourcustomboard

[upload]
board-model = yourcustomboard
serial-port = usb

(The setting serial-port = usb in the above is not standard)

Usage is simple, write your code in src/, add any libraries(arduino compatible format so that the build system can find it), write config in ino.ini, and:

ino build
ino upload
(also) ino clean

The overall stucture is then like:

code/
    |--ino.ini
    |
    |--src/
    |     |--sketch.ino     (arduino style c++/wiring code)
    |     |--file1.cpp
    |     |--file1.h
    |     |--file2.c
    |     |--file2.h
    |
    |--lib/
          |--ArduinoLib/    (arduino style library)

Ino seems to be unmaintained now, but it works fine with arduino1.0.6(1.5.x and later ones should work too, but I haven’t tried), which ships with avr-gcc 4.3.2. It was only missing a way to program devices via a programmer instead of using the serial bootloader. I sent a pull request which enables use of usb programmers from the config, you can checkout my version from https://github.com/ntavish/ino/ branch patch-1(unmerged), make sure to checkout this branch.

In the config example above, there is the name yourcustomboard, which could have been one of the board names listed inside the file /usr/local/share/arduino/hardware/arduino/boards.txt, for example:

uno
atmega328
diecimila
mega2560
mega
leonardo
...

To make our own custom board available in this list, first create a ‘profile’ for your own board in any location. The structure for the files in this is:

yourcustomboard/
|
|---boards.txt
|---variants/
            |
            |--standard/
                       |--pins_arduino.h

(Note: you might need to copy the directory cores/ from /usr/local/share/arduino/hardware/arduino/cores/ as yourcustomboard/cores/)

The file pins_arduino.h is pretty self-explanatory, it is the utility header defined for all supported boards by arduino IDE so that you can write have straight numbers in digitalRead/Write etc. instead of actual MCU pin port/numbers, A0/A1/A2/.., SS/MOSI/MISO, SDA/SCL, and utility macros like digitalPinToPCICR/digitalPinToPCICRbit/.. etc. Customising this you can map pins to your preference/circuit.

A sample custom boards.txt file for a custom board, set for programming with a usb programmer is:

##############################################################

yourcustomboard.name=Your custom board (ATmega1280) 14.745MHz

yourcustomboard.upload.protocol=usbasp
yourcustomboard.upload.maximum_size=126976
yourcustomboard.upload.speed=57600

yourcustomboard.bootloader.low_fuses=0xCE
yourcustomboard.bootloader.high_fuses=0x99
yourcustomboard.bootloader.extended_fuses=0xFF
yourcustomboard.bootloader.path=atmega
yourcustomboard.bootloader.file=ATmegaBOOT_168_atmega1280.hex
yourcustomboard.bootloader.unlock_bits=0x3F
yourcustomboard.bootloader.lock_bits=0x0F

yourcustomboard.build.mcu=atmega1280
yourcustomboard.build.f_cpu=14745600L
yourcustomboard.build.core=arduino
yourcustomboard.build.variant=standard

In this config all of the bootloader settings can be ignored(the fuse settings are only for documentation too). The setting protocol is the name of the usb programmer(as listed by avrdude) you plan to use for this board. The setting maximum_size might be incorrect in this example, since it subtracts bootloader flash size. The other important settings are mcu and f_cpu.

To create your own board’s boards.txt, just use the nearest board from yours in /usr/local/share/arduino/hardware/arduino/boards.txt as a template and modify.

I use my favourite editor and jsut use ino build/ino upload and the workflow is greatly simplified. Hope you too find it useful!



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Published

15 January 2016

Category

blog