Linux, robots and microcontrollers
This weekend was LUG weekend again. I took the Slackware laptop along again, and successfully connected up to the WiFi network at the pub. I borrowed the User Friendly cartoon books, and was also loaned a toy radio-controlled car chassis that could make the basis for a small robot. It has differential steering (tank-like), although it has four wheels (not tracks). Turns out to be the chassis of a Hitari Tumbler, although I'm missing the R/C transmitter, the battery and all the body shell parts.
Today, I have been sorting out some of my Atmel AVR microcontroller code, which was a bit of a mess. There was a small incident with TAB characters in the source code, which I have now eliminated. But the main problem is that the software is so closely tied to the hardware. Some of the code was thrown together with the AVR on a breadboard, and then played about with for a day or two. Then, I took the hardware apart and made something else, without making proper notes (as comments in the source code) of what I'd done. Oh well, it's a lot better now, and I have a properly-made adaptor unit to connect the AVR prototyping board to a 2-line, 16-character LCD. That LCD, though, takes up all 8 bits of Port D and three bits of Port B. That doesn't leave much left over on an ATmega8!
Today, I have been sorting out some of my Atmel AVR microcontroller code, which was a bit of a mess. There was a small incident with TAB characters in the source code, which I have now eliminated. But the main problem is that the software is so closely tied to the hardware. Some of the code was thrown together with the AVR on a breadboard, and then played about with for a day or two. Then, I took the hardware apart and made something else, without making proper notes (as comments in the source code) of what I'd done. Oh well, it's a lot better now, and I have a properly-made adaptor unit to connect the AVR prototyping board to a 2-line, 16-character LCD. That LCD, though, takes up all 8 bits of Port D and three bits of Port B. That doesn't leave much left over on an ATmega8!