Getting Satrted

To start programming the Atmega16 microcontroller, we first need to get some hardware ready and some software installed.
There are 3 basic things required-

Hardware:

• Programmer - we will be using AVR USBasp for this purpose throughout this blog.

Software:

• Software for writing code - we will be using 'programmers notepad'.
• Software for burning the code - we will be using 'AVRdude-GUI'.

AVR USBasp:

Connect the programmer to your computer. The computer will start searching and install the drivers on its own. Incase the driver is not found, you may download it from the following link and install it manually.

http://www.fischl.de/usbasp/

The programmer has 10 pins out of which 6 will be connected to the microcontroller.

These pins are :  

• MISO
• MOSI
• SCK
• RESET
• GND
• VCC

All the above pins will be connected to their respective pins on the microcontroller. The pin configuration of Atmega16 can be found here.

Programmer's Notepad:

To write the codes, we will be using 'Programmers  Notepad'. This is available within the winavr package , which is also required for programming the microcontroller. This can be downloaded from the following link:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/winavr/files/

Programmer's Notepad

Download and install winavr.

AVRdude GUI:

This is the software that we will be using to burn the program onto the microcontroller.

It can be downloaded from:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/avrdudegui/

It does not require installation and can be run directly. Extract the folder and place it on your desktop.

You are now ready to go ahead and write your first program.