It's the ACK1 !!

The ACK1 is the AVR Coding Kit designed as the companion for the AVR Coding 101 course.

It has everything you need to start programming the Microchip® AVR series of 8-bit microcontrollers.

If you already know how to program AVR microcontrollers, the ACK1 is a great little board for making a personalized badge, pin, or portable game!

It includes 2 buttons, 42 LEDs, a piezo buzzer, has serial UART I/O, and a battery holder for a CR2032 so you can take the ACK1 with you once you have programmed it!

The AVR series of microcontrollers have come a long way from the venerable ATmega328 and the programming has changed along with it.

The ACK1 includes a CH340 USB-UART adapter which doubles as the UPDI programmer. There is no need for a special purpose microcontroller programmer!

The microcontroller used on the ACK1 is the Microchip® ATtiny1616. This chip has 17 available general purpose I/O pins, 16KB of flash storage, 2KB of RAM, and 256 bytes of EEPROM.

What's that AVR Coding 101 Course?

First off, the AVR Coding 101 course is 100% open source and free. It's published under the MIT license so you are free to copy it, change it, and adapt it to your needs.

While the AVR Coding 101 course can be completed with other AVR hardware, it has been written with the features of the ACK1 in mind.

The AVR Coding 101 lessons cover:

• The ACK1 hardware kit
• the ATtiny1616 features
• the CH340E USB-UART adapter (also used for UPDI programming)
• AVR coding syntax
• Turning on/off an LEDs attached to I/O pins
• Reading a button from an I/O pin
• Creating a timer (TCB0) and updating a variable in an interrupt service routine (ISR)
• Controlling charlieplexed LEDs
• Using a timer (TCB0) to refresh a matrix of LEDs
• Creating a simple display buffer
• Calculating refresh rates
• Creating a timer (TBA0) to control an I/O pin to make tones
• Implementing Serial I/O using the USART interrupt service routines
• Storing data in EEPROM
• Reading the microcontroller signature
• Reading and updating the microcontroller configuration FUSES

Note: All of the lessons will be written using the C programming language. The lessons will not attempt to teach C programming. For those new to C programming, there are many online resources including a codecademy course.

But it's more than just a classroom hardware device!

The ACK1 has a CR2032 battery holder and an on/off power switch so you can disconnect it from the provided programmer and use it for a portable button, game, or badge. The demo mimics an animated heartbeat and it will beat in time to the song it plays.

Change the song, add new animations, create a game, and even scroll a text message!

Options

There are no options. The ACK1 comes fully assembled and USB-UART has the header pins already soldered.

You will need a USB data cable compatible with your computer and with a USB-C on one end to connect to the CH340E USB-UART adapter.

The 6-pin pre-solder pin connector of the CH340E will plug into the staggered header connector of the ACK1 hardware board. The staggered holes means the CH340E can be connected and removed from the ACK1 hardware board without the need for soldering.

Layout of the ACK1

The ACK1 hardware board has a staggered 6-pin header located at the lower left of the board. This is the location for connecting the CH340E USB-UART adapter. (Please note, the RX/TX labels refer to the RX and TX of the CH340E.)

Directly above the CH340E connection is a switch labeled UART-UPDI. This will switch the connection of the CH340E between connecting to the microcontroller USART pins and its UPDI programming pin. This switch must be in the UPDI position to program the microcontroller.

At the top left of the ACK1 is a header which provides access to several general purpose I/O pins of the microcontroller. The first and last pins (PB5 and PC3) also connect to the push buttons. The breakout pins have been specifically chosen as they provide access to I2C and SPI for user projects and future lessons.

To the immediate right of the breakout pins is a 12mm square piezo buzzer. This buzzer has been chosen because it produces reasonable volume, even when the ACK1 is powered by the CR2032 battery.

The upper right portion of the ACK1 contains 42 LEDs in a 6x7 matrix. The LEDs are charlieplexed and collectively share 7 general purpose I/O pins of the microcontroller.

The lower right portion of the ACK1 has a battery holder for a CR2032 coin cell. And along the lower edge of the ACK1 is an ON/OFF switch for the battery.

Immediately above the ON/OFF switch are two push buttons which are connected to general purpose I/O pins of the microcontroller.

Check out the documentation for more details on the hardware and the AVR Coding 101 Lessons!