#Micropendous The Micropendous boards were Development Boards for Atmel's USB AVR Microcontrollers with a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) hardware, firmware, and software development platform. They were designed for USB peripheral and hosting development.
The Arduino Leonardo and its clones are a much cheaper and easier to use FOSS platform for USB Device development based on the USB AVRs. For applications that require USB Hosting, projects like the BeagleBoneBlack or RaspberryPi are more capable and easier to develop with.
Micropendous AT90USB1287-based and Micropendous-32U2 boards might still be available from NooElec.
The QuickStart guide may be useful if you are developing custom USB AVR firmware.
The above is a Micropendous board. There is also a variety of earlier designs based on the USB AVRs. For basic USB connectivity check out the Micropendous-32U2.
Features
- Based on the AT90USB1287
- 120kb available FLASH memory for your programs (8kb used by USB bootloader - stock Atmel or LUFA)
- 8 kbytes SRAM and 4 kbytes of EEPROM
- up to 128 kbytes of external SRAM
- USB 2.0 Full Speed (12Mbit/s)
- USB Device/Host/OTG Modes of Operation
- USB or externally powered
- USB-B Jack and USB-A Receptacle selectable with a GPIO pin
- 16MHz crystal
- microSD connector
- PortB is bidirectionally voltage translated through a TXB0108 IC
- Opennect connector
- HWB button can be used as a user button in your applications
- JTAG header
- completely OpenHardware Design, schematic/layout/BillOfMaterials/assembly instructions available for Open Source KiCAD. Gerber and other technical files can be recreated.
- works with Open Source LUFA USB firmware library and Open Source LibUSB software library, or with Open Source PySerial library if using USBVirtualSerial-based firmware.
- Linux + AVR-GCC + LUFA + LUFA Bootloader + KiCAD + DFU-Programmer allow you to develop Open Source and/or Open Hardware projects around a Micropendous board without ever touching proprietary software.
Firmware Examples
Can be found in the latest release or via SVN.
All demos are based on LUFA and other LUFA demos can be modified to work an appropriate Micropendous boards.
- LUFAduino - Program your Micropendous board using Arduino-style code. Uses the preemptive FreeRTOS kernel to allow multi-tasking and the use of delays without interfering with USB functions.
- USBVirtualSerial-FreeRTOS - USB Virtual Serial communication example with preemptive FreeRTOS kernel.
- USBVirtualSerial - USB Virtual Serial communication example
- LoopBack - Custom-Class USB device communication example
- AVRISP - LUFA AVR ISP mkII clone AVR programmer
- BootloaderDFU - LUFA Bootloader for the USB AVRs
- MassStorage_MMC_SD_via_SPI - Mass Storage device demo using MMC or SD card connected in SPI mode
- MicropendousKeyboardTest - Keyboard demo to test pin connectivity. GND'ing pins types their name.
- SpeedTest - firmware and software to test USB throughput
- USBVirtualSerial_ADC - Get the current value of ADC pins using serial port software
- USBVirtualSerial_I2C - Virtual Serial Port to I2C interface
- USBVirtualSerial_LCD - Virtual Serial Port to HD44780 Character LCD interface
- USBVirtualSerial_SPI - Virtual Serial Port to SPI interface
- USBtoSerial - Virtual Serial Port to UART interface
- SRAM_Test - Test the external SRAM on a board which supports it. For SRAM Usage information see SRAM Usage Tutorial.
External Projects
- opendous-jtag - simple USB-JTAG interface
- userial - USB to I2C/SPI/GPIO bridge
- uhttpd-avr: microHTTPD server based on modified uIP-1.0 stack, running on AVR processor and ENC28J60
- lwip-avr: Port of lwip (open source TCP/IP stack) to 8bit AVR MCU
- BicycleLEDPOV: Persistence-of-Vision display for a bicycle wheel.
- Duce: Serial-Over-USB AVR Programmer
- Morse Keyboard: Connect an iambic keyer to type in Morse Code. This firmware was designed with an earlier version of LUFA/MyUSB. It works with the 1.5.3 MyUSB release.