Arduino under the Hood (AVR for Professionals)

As one of the most extensive course available: we will be looking at everything and more under the hood of Arduino. In its core the ATmega328P MCU integrates many features, that are not exposed through the Arduino library. While learning how the periphery works, the student will be able to write code exhibiting high performance at a low power consumption. Embedded systems deployed in the field and powered by small batteries can run and collect data for years.

The big advantage of the AVR platform is that many concepts introduced in this course are also applicable to other MCUs. Therefore an entire portfolio of MCUs ranging from the small ATtiny to the larger ATmega series becomes accessible. The ATmega328P used in this course is just an example and the student is encouraged to obtain programming experience for embedded systems not limited to Arduino. This is motivated by practical sessions as well as exercises in which a real world problems are to be solved. In case, questions during implementation arise, the student is able to peek at hints and tips and if nothing works, also the solutions are provided with plenty of comments in the source code.

This course provides handmade captions in English covering the following topics, which focus on the practical aspects and what a concept can be used for. In addition, the course does not follow a particular outline and the topics can be taken in any order based on the interest and needs. The covered topics include:

1. GNU Compiler Collection and what happens in every Step and why

2. A brief Introduction into C and Pointers

3. Moving from the Arduino library to AVR: Less Luxury, faster Execution, fewer Resources

4. How to compile with Makefiles? Targets, Rules and Shortcuts

5. Easy Mistakes in C and how to avoid them

   1. Attack Vectors

6. Peripheries:

   1. Timers, Counters, and Pulse Width Modulation

   2. Interrupts

7. Communication Protocols

   1. UART/USART

   2. I2C/TWI

   3. SPI

   4. DHT and 1-Wire

   5. USI

   6. How to mimic other, formerly incompatible and unsupported Protocols?

8. Analog Digital Converter

   1. How does it work?

   2. Measuring the Temperature without external Components

   3. Measuring Battery Level with the ADC

9. Analog Comparator

10. Non-volatile Memories

    1. Flash

       1. How to use the Flash (Program Memory) for Constants?

       2. How to use the Flash while executing a Program?

    2. EEPROM

    3. Fuses

       1. Clock Sources

       2. Lock Bits

       3. Debugging

11. Running the AVR on a Breadboard

12. Saving power

    1. Sleeping

    2. Dynamic Clock Frequency

    3. Turning off unnecessary Components

    4. Wake-up Sources

13. Debugging (with practical examples)

    1. Simulators

    2. JTAG

    3. debugWIRE

14. Bonus Chapter: Parallel Task Execution

After completing this course, the successful student will have the experience not only to evaluate existing software, but also create implementations which are highly optimized to be deployed on small microcontrollers to squeeze out every quanta of performance and battery life.