KludgeGuru’s EEBlog

This is a followup review post from this one:  AVR JTAGICE mkII clone – Review which was a followup from this one:  AVR JTAGICE mkII clone

It’s been pretty quiet on the KludgeGuru front for a month while I impatiently waited for my AVR JTAGICE mkII clone to be returned from china.  If you didn’t read the two posts linked to above the basic story is I purchased the clone and when I got it the debugging capabilities didn’t work.  So I returned it where they were able to repeat the error I was getting and instead of sending me a new one they shipped it back to the manufacturer in China and said it would be 3-4 weeks for repair.  11 weeks later I got it back…now that’s what you call great service. 

Here is the timeline of my correspondance:

January 20th – I shipped the unit back

Vendor (January 23rd) – Hi, I tested your mkii clone and as you said, the debugging mode doesn’t work.  I will have to ship it to the manufacturer for a repair.  The whole process can take 3-4 weeks, as they are closed right now because of Chinese New Year celebration.

Me (February 17th) – Do you have an update on when I can expect to have my mkII clone back?  It’s almost been 4 weeks.

Vendor (February 17th) – It was Chinese New Year Holidays and they started working at the end of last week.  It will take another 2-4 weeks.

Me (March 16th) – It’s been another 4 weeks any news on the MKII clone?

Vendor (March 16th) – I know… long delay.  Last week the manufacturer told me that they fixed the MKII clone, and I ordered some additional stuff to ship all together back to the US.  It should be here by the end of this week or beginning of next week.

Me (March 27th) – It’s almost been another two weeks.  Do you have an update on this item?

Vendor (March 28th) – I am starting to worry too… as I said, it was shipped more than 2 weeks ago with other items I purchased to them but I haven’t received anything yet.  If by the end of next week I don’t get the unit back from China, I will ship you a new unit.

Vendor (April 1st) – I got the device back.

Me (April 1st) – Did you happen to test the debugging to see if it works now?

Vendor (April 1st) – I tested it and it works.

April 8th – I finally received it!

The good news is the guy was nice and responded to my email quickly.  It just was a shame I had to wait 11 weeks to get a mkII clone when I received a defective product.  I still think that if you purchase something that doesn’t work the store should replace it with a new one that does work.

Also I tested the mkII clone and the debugging does work now.  I was using a friends JTAGICE for awhile but he needed it back so now I can finally continue working on my projects that I started a couple months!

UPDATE:  I can program micocontrollers using the JTAG interface but the SPI interface does not work…If I could go back I would have spent the extra money and purchased the real thing.

This is a followup review post from this one:  AVR JTAGICE mkII clone

I finally tried out the AVR JTAGICE mkII clone.  AVRSTudio connected to it just like it should.  It downloaded the latest firmware.  I connected to my AVR Butterfly and it read the device signature.  Everything was looking good until I tried to debug my code.  Whenever I entered debug mode the JTAGICE mkII clone would time out and disconnect from AVRStudio.

I was a bit discouraged and I had to figure out if I was doing something wrong or if I got a bad programmer.  One of my friends had a JTAGICE mkII from atmel that was not a clone so I borrowed it and tried it.  It didn’t have any problems in debug mode.  So I did get a bad programmer.

I contacted the vendor where I purchased the programmer and he said to ship it back and they will test it.  So I shipped it back to them and a few days later I got this response:

Hi, I tested your mkii clone and as you said, the debugging mode doesn’t work.  I will have to ship it to the manufacturer for a repair.  The whole process can take 3-4 weeks, as they are closed right now because of Chinese New Year celebration.

So the good news is they had the same problem I was having with it.  The bad news is they will not be sending me a new one, instead they are sending it back to China for repair.  So far I’m not all that impressed with the clone.  I think if you receive a device that does not work they should replace it with a new one instead of sending it back for repair.  Maybe in a month (hopefully) when I get the clone back it will work as it should.

To see a list of other AVR programmer/debuggers check out my AVR Programmer/Debugger post.

EDIT:  I finally got it back see here AVR JTAGICE mkII clone – Review (Final)

I decided to use the WINAVR development suite which includes the AVR-GCC compiler for C and C++.  The great thing about these development tools is that they are free and they integrate into AVRStudio.

The hard thing about switching from the PIC C18 compiler to the AVR-GCC compiler so far has been setting and clearing a single port pin.

With the PIC compiler I was able to do this to set & clear pins:

PORTBbits.RB5 = 1;  // Sets Port B Pin 5
PORTBbits.PB5 = 0;  // Clears Port B Pin 5

With the AVR-GCC compiler you use bit shifting:

PORTB |=  (1 << 5)  // Sets Port B Pin 5
PORTB &= ~(1 << 5)  // Clears Port B Pin 5

I’m not saying it is hard to use bit shifting, it’s just a little more cryptic and will take a little getting used to.  Another option is to define macros which might make it more readable:

#define bit_set(p,m) ((p) |= (m))
#define bit_clear(p,m) ((p) &= ~(m))

Here is how you would use the macros in the code:

bit_set(PORTD,  BIT(5));  // Sets Port B Pin 5
bit_clear(PORTB, BIT(5));  // Clears Port B Pin 5

Here are some other useful macro definitions for bit shifting:

#define bit_get(p,m) ((p) & (m))
#define bit_flip(p,m) ((p) ^= (m))
#define bit_write(c,p,m) (c ? bit_set(p,m) : bit_clear(p,m))
#define BIT(x) (0×01 << (x))
#define LONGBIT(x) ((unsigned long)0×00000001 << (x))

The AVR Butterfly is a neat little demonstration kit that is fairly cheap and can be reprogrammed and modified for you own custom project.

Features:

• ATmega169 AVR microcontroller
• 100 Segment LCD Display
• 4Mbit Data Flash
• 32KHz Oscillator for RTC
• 4-way Joystick, with center push button
• Light Sensor (LDR)
• Temperature Sensor (NTC)
• Speaker for Sound Generation
• Access to Peripherals through Header Connectors
• RS-232 Level Converter
• Voltage Reading 0-5V
• Preloaded with Demonstration Program
• Boot Loader
• Can be reprogrammed using AVR Studio
• Inexpensive ≈ $20

The preloaded program has the following modes:

• Code Revision
• Clock
• Date
• Music – Fur Elise
• Music – Turkey March
• Music – Siren 1
• Music – Siren 2
• Music – Whistle (Cat Call)
• Name – Use as a scrolling name badge
• Temperature – Celsius & Fahrenheit
• Voltage Monitor
• Light Monitor
• It can also adjust the contrast on the Display
• Auto Power Save after a set number of minutes (5 to 90 minutes)

I plan on using this to prototype the control circuit & program for my 3-Axis Talking Skull.  I should be able to control all the servos with this and also interface it to my PlayStation 2 controller.  I have some good contacts with the Rep from Arrow Electronics.  He was able to get me two of these cards for free…can’t beat that.