If you are thinking to realize things using AVRs you are going to need some minimum working hardware with you. In case you are happy with programming and simulation part PROTEUS or AVR Studio may help you. We are going to write about these simulation environments in our latter posts. For, now lets look at the minimum things you require to realize your first AVR experiment.

Minimal Schematic

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1. Of course we need a Power Supply to provide food (power) which runs our system. Almost all of the members of AVR family runs on a regulated power supply of + 5V/3.3V.
2. Secondly we need a master clock generator to provide clock to our system. One can connect external oscillator to run the system but if you are a beginner, doing it first time to learn in the process, i suggest you to go for Internal Oscillator of AVR (Just another thing to know about). Yes !!!! AVR family of micro controllers have internal RC oscillator to provide master clock to the system. Internal Oscillator must be disabled when using external oscillator. This can be done using Fuse bit settings.
3. Now we need our microcontroller to start executing its program right from the beginning when it is powered ON. But you need not to worry about RESET circuitry as AVR’s have internal power ON reset circuitry.
4. Now, an obvious question arises, How can we transfer the .HEX file (a file generated by cross compilers for target Micro controller) onto the program flash memory? It can be done using SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) as shown in schematic above using 6 lines MOSI, MISO, SCLK, RESET, Vcc, GND, labeled as Prog. Load in the schematic.
5. You are gonna need a Programmer / Burner to transfer your machine executable code onto flash. Burner includes software as well as hardware part.
6. Software part of burner is a desktop front end which let you choose the target .HEX file. Apart from that it also allows you to choose the proper hardware (both programming hardware(burner h/w) and the target hardware), the PC port you are using to e.g. USB, COM, LPT etc.
7. The most popular software burner for AVRs is AVR DUDE, its an open source AVR program loader by GNU developers. Other popular software front end for loader are PONYPROG, ATPROG. WinAVR and AVR Studio do provide loader utility with their package but they virtually use AVR dude only.
8. Now once you have your burner software front end ready and .HEX file ready with you, Its time to load your code onto flash of AVR device. Now you are gonna need hardware part of burner. It can be as simple as 3 resistors, 4 wires hardware or can be as complex as something called AVR Dragon. at E L E C T R O O N S we have made several kind of these programmers, you can build one of them for you. Here is the link to the post describing some programmers.
9. Once you have some hardware burner load your .HEX file onto flash, If everything goes fine micro controller should execute sequence of expected instructions. If its not working up to your expectation (program) do check all the connections and you program once again, Fuse bits settings and Power Supply, Still its not working drop a comment here, we will see !

Its an AVR Sheet by E L E C T R O O N S . com, AVR Sheets are series of illustrated AVR tutorials for beginners. Do post your Query and suggestion below.

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