USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Warren]

Rolf graciously granted me access to add to the AVR-Ada's Tutorial
page,
my own notes on using the USB Boarduino (Arduino) with AVR-Ada.
It can be found here:

https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/avr-ada/index.php?title=Tutorial#USB_Boarduino_Tutorial

If you are currently using the Arduino, this should make it easier to
get
started with AVR-Ada.  This documents some things that are specific
to the Arduino environment that took me some time to work out.
Consider it the "fast track".

The Arduino focus has always been to make it easy for people to get
started and teaching, which is ok.  But I think they've sometimes
"dumbed it down" too much.  They don't want their students to get
confused by technical details like upload baud rates or I/O ports
and pins. They'd prefer them to know that the LED is "digital pin 13"
instead of  Port B, bit 5 (on a particular chip).  Anyway, that's
just
my opinion- I like to drive.

So I've documented a few Arduino details that may be of interest
in that tutorial.

Warren

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Brian Drummond]

On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 19:50:20 -0700 (PDT), Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com> wrote:

>Rolf graciously granted me access to add to the AVR-Ada's Tutorial
>page,
>my own notes on using the USB Boarduino (Arduino) with AVR-Ada.
>It can be found here:
>
>https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/avr-ada/index.php?title=Tutorial#USB_Boarduino_Tutorial
>
>If you are currently using the Arduino, this should make it easier to
>get
>started with AVR-Ada.  This documents some things that are specific
>to the Arduino environment that took me some time to work out.
>Consider it the "fast track".

>So I've documented a few Arduino details that may be of interest
>in that tutorial.
>
>Warren

Thanks!

One or two questions though:

"I'm going to assume you have Cygwin installed (or using Linux). 
Alternatively, you may be using a DOS or MSYS shell instead. 
To install AVR-Ada currently, you need to download and install:

   1. WinAVR-20100110-install.exe
   2. AVR-Ada-1.1.0.exe "

It seems these instructions are Windows only, despite the assumption.

Presumably WinAVR is unnecessary; the only tool I can see in the Linux section
is avrdude, available from
http://www.nongnu.org/avrdude/
The Linux AVR-Ada binaries are very obsolete - 0.41 - so presumably it's built
from source.

But then:
"If you're using Linux instead (not using Cygwin), your make file can be
simpler:
MCU=atmega168p 
AVRDUDE_CONF=C:/WinAVR-20100110/bin/avrdude.conf"

C:?
Makes me wonder if you ARE using WinAVR, but under Wine?
If so, it's worth mentioning which version of Wine it was tested with.
Or is this a Cygwin-ism that escaped into the Linux script?

If you can easily answer these - great! If not, you may just have inspired me to
test it for myself. I bought an Arduino in, ahem, March, and it's been waiting
for a spare moment ;-)

- Brian

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Warren]

On Aug 4, 6:52 am, Brian Drummond <brian_drumm...@btconnect.com>
wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 19:50:20 -0700 (PDT), Warren <ve3...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Rolf graciously granted me access to add to the AVR-Ada's Tutorial
> >page,
> >my own notes on using the USB Boarduino (Arduino) with AVR-Ada.
> >It can be found here:
>
> >https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/avr-ada/index.php?title=Tutori...

> One or two questions though:
>
> "I'm going to assume you have Cygwin installed (or using Linux).
> Alternatively, you may be using a DOS or MSYS shell instead.
> To install AVR-Ada currently, you need to download and install:
>
>    1. WinAVR-20100110-install.exe
>    2. AVR-Ada-1.1.0.exe "
>
> It seems these instructions are Windows only, despite the assumption.

True, as far as WinAVR is concerned. I assumed Linux users
would naturally use the AVR tool chain instead.

> Presumably WinAVR is unnecessary; the only tool I can see in the Linux section
> is avrdude, available fromhttp://www.nongnu.org/avrdude/
> The Linux AVR-Ada binaries are very obsolete - 0.41 - so presumably it's built
> from source.

Ya, I didn't try out the Linux tools for it.  But you're right, some
clarification would be useful.

> MCU=atmega168p
> AVRDUDE_CONF=C:/WinAVR-20100110/bin/avrdude.conf"
>
> C:?
> Makes me wonder if you ARE using WinAVR, but under Wine?

No, that should be changed to a UNIX path. ;-)

> If you can easily answer these - great! If not, you may just have inspired me to
> test it for myself. I bought an Arduino in, ahem, March, and it's been waiting
> for a spare moment ;-)
>
> - Brian

I only tested with WinAVR, even though Linux would be my development
platform
by choice. But my music recording software is Windows specific, and I
generally
like keeping things in one place. I have Linux, Solaris etc. on other
machines
here, but keeping my consoles all working is a pain.

But I know there are many people using AVR under Linux.  So give it
a try. Like you said, you may need to download sources though.

Warren

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Warren]

On Aug 4, 6:52 am, Brian Drummond <brian_drumm...@btconnect.com>
wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 19:50:20 -0700 (PDT), Warren <ve3...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Rolf graciously granted me access to add to the AVR-Ada's Tutorial
> >page,
> >my own notes on using the USB Boarduino (Arduino) with AVR-Ada.
> >It can be found here:
>
> >https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/avr-ada/index.php?title=Tutori...
...
> Presumably WinAVR is unnecessary; the only tool I can see in the Linux section
> is avrdude, available fromhttp://www.nongnu.org/avrdude/
> The Linux AVR-Ada binaries are very obsolete - 0.41 - so presumably it's built
> from source.
...
> - Brian

Brian, I made some minor tweaks to the tutorial to be clearer about
the
platforms (and fixed the unix path).  While I've not used AVR-GCC
under
Linux, it is probably a genrally better experience than WinAVR,
provided
you can find reasonably recent packages.

The following might be a good place to start:

http://www.avrfreaks.net/wiki/index.php/Documentation:AVR_GCC

Otherwise google AVR-GCC.

Warren

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Brian Drummond]

On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 06:13:31 -0700 (PDT), Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Aug 4, 6:52�am, Brian Drummond <brian_drumm...@btconnect.com>
>wrote:
>> On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 19:50:20 -0700 (PDT), Warren <ve3...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >Rolf graciously granted me access to add to the AVR-Ada's Tutorial
>> >page,
>> >my own notes on using the USB Boarduino (Arduino) with AVR-Ada.
>> >It can be found here:
>>
>> >https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/avr-ada/index.php?title=Tutori...
>...
>> Presumably WinAVR is unnecessary; the only tool I can see in the Linux section
>> is avrdude, available fromhttp://www.nongnu.org/avrdude/
>> The Linux AVR-Ada binaries are very obsolete - 0.41 - so presumably it's built
>> from source.
>...
>> - Brian
>
>Brian, I made some minor tweaks to the tutorial to be clearer about
>the
>platforms (and fixed the unix path). 

Very useful clarifications, thanks!

It'll probably be the weekend before I can try it, but the instructions now give
me much more confidence that it'll work on Linux.

- Brian

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Warren]

On Aug 4, 5:26 pm, Brian Drummond <brian_drumm...@btconnect.com>
wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 06:13:31 -0700 (PDT), Warren <ve3...@gmail.com> wrote:
...
> >Brian, I made some minor tweaks to the tutorial to be clearer about
> >the
> >platforms (and fixed the unix path).
>
> Very useful clarifications, thanks!
>
> It'll probably be the weekend before I can try it, but the instructions now give
> me much more confidence that it'll work on Linux.
>
> - Brian

If you run into any Linux AVR-GCC issues you think are worth sharing,
I could add them to the tutorial as well.  Good luck with that!

I'm curious: Precisely which chip and programmer did you get?

Warren

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Brian Drummond]

On Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:26:32 +0100, Brian Drummond
<brian_drummond@btconnect.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 06:13:31 -0700 (PDT), Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com> wrote:

>>Brian, I made some minor tweaks to the tutorial to be clearer about
>>the
>>platforms (and fixed the unix path). 
>
>Very useful clarifications, thanks!
>
>It'll probably be the weekend before I can try it, but the instructions now give
>me much more confidence that it'll work on Linux.

Several weekends later, I have managed to spend a few hours on this.

None of the obvious (to me) approaches to installing the tools have worked
smoothly on my machine (running OpenSuse 11.3).

The closest I've got is using the cross-avr-binutils (2.20) and cross-avr-gcc
(4.5.0) packages from OpenSuse, available as binary and source rpms. The binary
version is built without Ada support, but the source builds without apparent
complaints, to support Ada.  Ditto avr-libc v1.70 (with more difficulty) from
the same source.

Now the AVR-Ada package (1.1-0) won't build, complaining that "avr-gnatprep" is
not found (and indeed I can't find it!, though gnatbind is present) 

Does anyone know which package SHOULD supply gnatprep, so I can try to track
down what's missing?)


Incidentally the AVR-Ada package contains a do-it-all script based around
GCC4.3.2. This fails, building binutils, with compile errors in tc-avr.c. 
Presumably it would work if I could dig out a 4.3 era GCC, but that's not a
trivial route either.

- Brian

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Tero Koskinen]

On Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:41:37 +0100 Brian Drummond wrote:

> On Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:26:32 +0100, Brian Drummond
> <brian_drummond@btconnect.com> wrote:
> 
> >On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 06:13:31 -0700 (PDT), Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >>Brian, I made some minor tweaks to the tutorial to be clearer about
> >>the
> >>platforms (and fixed the unix path). 
> >
> >Very useful clarifications, thanks!
> >
> >It'll probably be the weekend before I can try it, but the instructions now give
> >me much more confidence that it'll work on Linux.
> 
> Several weekends later, I have managed to spend a few hours on this.
> 
> None of the obvious (to me) approaches to installing the tools have worked
> smoothly on my machine (running OpenSuse 11.3).
> 
> The closest I've got is using the cross-avr-binutils (2.20) and cross-avr-gcc
> (4.5.0) packages from OpenSuse, available as binary and source rpms.

I have AVR-GCC 4.5.0 with Ada support and AVR-Ada 1.1.0 RPM .spec files
for Fedora 13 available at http://iki.fi/tero.koskinen/avr-gnat/

They should probably work out of the box with Arduino (atmega328p),
but I think I disabled support for all other chipsets[1] because it was
easier (for me) that way.

> - Brian

-- 
Tero Koskinen - http://iki.fi/tero.koskinen/

[1] file arduino.patch

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Brian Drummond]

On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:29:31 +0300, Tero Koskinen <tero.koskinen@iki.fi> wrote:


>> None of the obvious (to me) approaches to installing the tools have worked
>> smoothly on my machine (running OpenSuse 11.3).
>> 
>> The closest I've got is using the cross-avr-binutils (2.20) and cross-avr-gcc
>> (4.5.0) packages from OpenSuse, available as binary and source rpms.
>
>I have AVR-GCC 4.5.0 with Ada support and AVR-Ada 1.1.0 RPM .spec files
>for Fedora 13 available at http://iki.fi/tero.koskinen/avr-gnat/
>
>They should probably work out of the box with Arduino (atmega328p),
>but I think I disabled support for all other chipsets[1] because it was
>easier (for me) that way.

Thanks to you and David for further suggestions.

Building the 4.3 toolset using GCC4.5 would be non-trivial, involving patching
the sources (the previously mentioned failure in binutils2.19, tc-avr.c turns
out to be a negative enum! GCC4.5 objects to this - the "solution" in 2.20 is to
cast it to an int...)

The atmega328p is not the only AVR I want to target, so I may have work to do if
I use these. But it's good to know there's life in AVR-GCC 4.5 despite the
number of online sources reporting you need 4.3.x. If my current build runs into
difficulty I'll take a look at these rpms. 

I had to disable *some* devices to build avr-libc 1.70 with GCC4.5.0 (or 4.5.1),
because the compiler didn't recognise them, and didn't report correctly
http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=45261

But not many. (why did the source rpm named 4.5.0 build a compiler identifying
itself as 4.5.1, I wonder?)

- Brian

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Ludovic Brenta]

Brian Drummond wrote on comp.lang.ada:
> why did the source rpm named 4.5.0 build a compiler identifying
> itself as 4.5.1, I wonder?

Probably because this RPM was built from the gcc-4_4-branch some time
between the releases of 4.5.0 and 4.5.1. The GCC maintainers change
the version number in the sources immediately after each release.
Thus, the compiler can report itself as 4.5.1 even before 4.5.1 is
formally released. You would normally also get a date to disambiguate
the version.

--
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Warren]

Brian Drummond expounded in
news:6e8376p4ltcvberbt9a44ub44vc48vjr3m@4ax.com: 

> None of the obvious (to me) approaches to installing the tools have
> worked smoothly on my machine (running OpenSuse 11.3).
> 
> The closest I've got is using the cross-avr-binutils (2.20) and
> cross-avr-gcc (4.5.0) packages from OpenSuse, available as binary and
> source rpms. The binary version is built without Ada support, but the
> source builds without apparent complaints, to support Ada.  Ditto
> avr-libc v1.70 (with more difficulty) from the same source.
> 
> Now the AVR-Ada package (1.1-0) won't build, complaining that
> "avr-gnatprep" is not found (and indeed I can't find it!, though
> gnatbind is present) 

avr-gnatprep AFAIK, should be available from your "cross-avr-binutils"
if it supported Ada, which you say doesn't. I would also expect to
find it if you built and installed it from sources.  BUT, under
Linux I can't think of a good reason to have an avr-gnatprep in
addition to a Linux native gnatprep. So maybe all you need to do
is to create a symlink from gnatprep to avr-gnatprep, where ever 
your gnatprep is installed.

> Does anyone know which package SHOULD supply gnatprep, so I can try to
> track down what's missing?)

On the WinAVR side, AVR-Ada builds on top of the plain "avr-gcc" 
toolset supplied in WinAVR. So AVR-Ada is designed to build an
Ada toolset, in addition to it's Ada avr libraries and code.

If you have a built version of the toolchain working already (and 
resolved avr-gnatprep), then you can skip the toolchain build in 
AVR-Ada, I would think. Hopefully you can just build the Ada AVR 
libraries and package support.

> Incidentally the AVR-Ada package contains a do-it-all script based
> around GCC4.3.2. This fails, building binutils, with compile errors in
> tc-avr.c. Presumably it would work if I could dig out a 4.3 era GCC,
> but that's not a trivial route either.
> 
> - Brian

I haven't looked at the script, but you can probably edit the
script (or supply arguments) to skip the tool chain build, and 
just focus on compiling the AVR-Ada components with the toolchain 
you installed.

Warren

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Brian Drummond]

On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:28:53 +0000 (UTC), Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com> wrote:

>Brian Drummond expounded in
>news:6e8376p4ltcvberbt9a44ub44vc48vjr3m@4ax.com: 
>
>> None of the obvious (to me) approaches to installing the tools have
>> worked smoothly on my machine (running OpenSuse 11.3).
>> 
>> The closest I've got is using the cross-avr-binutils (2.20) and
>> cross-avr-gcc (4.5.0) packages from OpenSuse, available as binary and
>> source rpms. The binary version is built without Ada support, but the
>> source builds without apparent complaints, to support Ada.  Ditto
>> avr-libc v1.70 (with more difficulty) from the same source.
>> 
>> Now the AVR-Ada package (1.1-0) won't build, complaining that
>> "avr-gnatprep" is not found (and indeed I can't find it!, though
>> gnatbind is present) 
>
>avr-gnatprep AFAIK, should be available from your "cross-avr-binutils"
>if it supported Ada, which you say doesn't. I would also expect to
>find it if you built and installed it from sources.  

Thanks. There was no sign of config options to support Ada building
cross-avr-binutils, but I wondered. It's good to know that binutils is where to
focus, if need be...

>So maybe all you need to do
>is to create a symlink from gnatprep to avr-gnatprep, where ever 
>your gnatprep is installed.

Good point! It's not clear to me what needs to be cross-specific (beyond
compiler and assembler, obviously!) and which native tools will do, but the
preprocessor should be agnostic if anything is. So I'll try that first.

>> Incidentally the AVR-Ada package contains a do-it-all script based
>> around GCC4.3.2. This fails, building binutils, with compile errors in
>> tc-avr.c. Presumably it would work if I could dig out a 4.3 era GCC,
>> but that's not a trivial route either.
>> 
>I haven't looked at the script, but you can probably edit the
>script (or supply arguments) to skip the tool chain build, and 
>just focus on compiling the AVR-Ada components with the toolchain 
>you installed.

The pre-packaged cross-avr-gcc chain appears OK except for Ada support.

Rebuilding from source (loosely following the instructions on 
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/avr-ada/index.php?title=Setup#Compiling_the_AVR-Ada_libraries
but adapting for 4.5) appears to be successful (i.e. complete with only minor
difficulty and no errors)

Compiling the AVR-Ada components is where I came unstuck. I'll try the symlink
next.

Thanks for the suggestion,
- Brian

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[David Sauvage]

>
> >> Incidentally the AVR-Ada package contains a do-it-all script based
> >> around GCC4.3.2. This fails, building binutils, with compile errors in
> >> tc-avr.c. Presumably it would work if I could dig out a 4.3 era GCC,
> >> but that's not a trivial route either.
>

There is also a tutorial on AVR-Ada wiki to build AVR-Ada 1.1.0
(patched version)/GCC-4.3 from Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid and Debian 6.0
Squeeze host, see :
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/avr-ada/index.php?title=Build_From_Ubuntu_Lucid_Or_Debian_Squeeze

Arduino Board abstraction package are in development and will be
published soon.

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Brian Drummond]

On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:28:53 +0000 (UTC), Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com> wrote:

>So maybe all you need to do
>is to create a symlink from gnatprep to avr-gnatprep, where ever 
>your gnatprep is installed.

That did the trick, as far as completing the build.
I'll update again when I test the tools.

Thanks again,
- Brian

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Warren]

Brian Drummond expounded in
news:3ba776pdc7ld4fb5rhhhivckvs00u5rb0e@4ax.com: 

> On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:28:53 +0000 (UTC), Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com>
> wrote: 
> 
>>So maybe all you need to do
>>is to create a symlink from gnatprep to avr-gnatprep, where ever 
>>your gnatprep is installed.
> 
> That did the trick, as far as completing the build.
> I'll update again when I test the tools.
> 
> Thanks again,
> - Brian

I'm glad to hear that! Good luck.

Warren

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Brian Drummond]

On Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:41:37 +0100, Brian Drummond
<brian_drummond@btconnect.com> wrote:

>None of the obvious (to me) approaches to installing the tools have worked
>smoothly on my machine (running OpenSuse 11.3).
>
>The closest I've got is using the cross-avr-binutils (2.20) and cross-avr-gcc
>(4.5.0) packages from OpenSuse, available as binary and source rpms. The binary
>version is built without Ada support, but the source builds without apparent
>complaints, to support Ada.  Ditto avr-libc v1.70 (with more difficulty) from
>the same source.

If anyone's interested, I have since found this page
http://jmanton.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/compiling-avr-gcc-toolchain-from-scratch/
which, apart from the GCC configure command line changes to add Ada support from
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/avr-ada/index.php?title=Setup
is probably what I should have done.

It includes the patch to add support for the missing devices, hence avoids the
difficulty I had with avr-libc 1.70.

- Brian

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Brian Drummond]

On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 19:50:20 -0700 (PDT), Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com> wrote:

>Rolf graciously granted me access to add to the AVR-Ada's Tutorial
>page,

>The Arduino focus has always been to make it easy for people to get
>started and teaching, which is ok.  But I think they've sometimes
>"dumbed it down" too much.  They don't want their students to get
>confused by technical details like upload baud rates or I/O ports
>and pins. They'd prefer them to know that the LED is "digital pin 13"
>instead of  Port B, bit 5 (on a particular chip).  Anyway, that's
>just my opinion- I like to drive.

Forgot to mention:

this looks like a candidate for an "Arduino" package which contains all the
renames, so you can "with Arduino" and write
   Arduino.Led := On;
or, if you want to drive the port directly, simply read the package instead of
rummaging through data sheets and schematics.

Led types should be enumerations, or renamed subtypes of boolean, (On,Off) or
(Off,On) according to the way they are connected, rather than (True,False).

- Brian

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Warren]

Brian Drummond expounded in
news:8cjl56l69ruae3ev5ntfnjvker3uldlctg@4ax.com: 
>>The Arduino focus has always been to make it easy for people to get
>>started and teaching, which is ok.  But I think they've sometimes
>>"dumbed it down" too much.  They don't want their students to get
>>confused by technical details like upload baud rates or I/O ports
>>and pins. They'd prefer them to know that the LED is "digital pin 13"
>>instead of  Port B, bit 5 (on a particular chip).  Anyway, that's
>>just my opinion- I like to drive.
> 
> Forgot to mention:
> 
> this looks like a candidate for an "Arduino" package which contains
> all the renames, so you can "with Arduino" and write
>    Arduino.Led := On;
> or, if you want to drive the port directly, simply read the package
> instead of rummaging through data sheets and schematics.
> 
> Led types should be enumerations, or renamed subtypes of boolean,
> (On,Off) or (Off,On) according to the way they are connected, rather
> than (True,False). 
> 
> - Brian

I have no interest in doing that myself. The Arduino folks 
have what I consider, a rather extreme focus on "easy for 
new students". That's ok, it's their project.  But as part 
of that focus, they've made changes to the compiler to make 
it "a new language" to simplify it further for students -- 
so it's not strictly C/C++, though it obviously is mostly 
that.  They've even entertained making "010" mean 10 decimal,
instead of the octal value of 8 it means in true C.  To me 
this seems all wrong, but it's their project (this will have
a major impact on include files if they do it!)

So even maintaining a separate AVR C include file set may
introduce extra work. It would certainly be a full time job 
keeping a separately maintained set of Arduino "mapping 
packages" in Ada.

In my opinion, you choose an AVR platform (or family) and 
design for that.  At that point you know what your hardware
looks like.  Since you're laying out the code, you can
formalize ports etc. symbolically yourself, and thus
eliminate hard-coding.

To me, the biggest plus on the Arduino side is the cheap
and easy to use programmers, hardware, "shields" and PCBs
etc.  Now, being able to use Ada on them, is just icing
on the cake.

Warren

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Brian Drummond]

On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:16:38 +0000 (UTC), Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com> wrote:

>Brian Drummond expounded in
>news:8cjl56l69ruae3ev5ntfnjvker3uldlctg@4ax.com: 
>>>The Arduino focus has always been to make it easy for people to get
>>>started and teaching, which is ok.  But I think they've sometimes
>>>"dumbed it down" too much.  They don't want their students to get
>>>confused by technical details like upload baud rates or I/O ports
>>>and pins. They'd prefer them to know that the LED is "digital pin 13"
>>>instead of  Port B, bit 5 (on a particular chip).  Anyway, that's
>>>just my opinion- I like to drive.

>> this looks like a candidate for an "Arduino" package which contains
>> all the renames, so you can "with Arduino" and write
>>    Arduino.Led := On;

>I have no interest in doing that myself. The Arduino folks 
>have what I consider, a rather extreme focus on "easy for 
>new students". That's ok, it's their project.  

Apologies if that sounded like a request! It may be something I can tackle, once
the basic tools are in place.

>To me, the biggest plus on the Arduino side is the cheap
>and easy to use programmers, hardware, "shields" and PCBs
>etc.  Now, being able to use Ada on them, is just icing
>on the cake.

Agreed.

- Brian

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[b.robinson.jp]

Warren,

Thanks for taking the time to share your notes.  I tried to get AVR-
Ada working for my AVR project earlier this but I never made any
progress and ended up sticking with C.  I really would like to have a
go at Ada on my AVR as I do enjoy Ada programming.  Thank you for your
efforts.

To all,

I've followed the notes and I've made it through getting the C version
of Blinky to run on my hardware.  I'm running into an issue with the
GNAT project file, however.  I created a directory "C:\AVR\Projects
\Blinky" that has blinky.adb, blinky.gpr and the regular Makefile from
Warren's notes.  The files are exactly the same except the MCU setting
is different.  When I run the make in that directory, I get the
following error:

C:\AVR\Projects\Blinky> make
avr-gnatmake -g -XMCU=at90usb646 -f blinky.gpr
avr-gcc -c -g -x ada blinky.gpr
blinky.gpr:1:06: identifier expected
blinky.gpr:2:01: compilation unit expected
avr-gnatmake: "blinky.gpr" compilation error
make: *** [all] Error 4

The line it is referring to is:
  > with "avr.gpr";

Should avr-gcc be running on blinky.gpr?  I had expected blinky.adb,
but not blinky.gpr.  Then again I'm new to GNAT...  Any suggestions
for getting past this error?  Do I need to specify a path to avr.gpr
from C:\AVR\AvrAda1_1_0\lib\gnat somewhere?

I'd really appreciate any pointers or advice.  Thank you.

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[David Sauvage]

On 26 août, 04:26, "b.robinson...@gmail.com" <b.robinson...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Should avr-gcc be running on blinky.gpr?
no

>Any suggestions for getting past this error?
There is a problem in your Makefile paste it and others could help you

>  Do I need to specify a path to avr.gpr
no, if the path of avr.gpr is set in your ADA_PROJECT_PATH global env

> I'd really appreciate any pointers or advice.
The correct command would start like this:

avr-gnatmake -P blinky.gpr  -XMCU=at90usb646

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Warren]

David Sauvage expounded in news:8bfbd728-638e-4d27-b52e-
0107c6b2847d@i31g2000yqm.googlegroups.com:

>> I'd really appreciate any pointers or advice.
> The correct command would start like this:
> 
> avr-gnatmake -P blinky.gpr  -XMCU=at90usb646

Yes, the "-P" option is the key.  Without it,
avr-gnatmake doesn't know there is a project file
involved.

Warren

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[b.robinson.jp]

> >  Do I need to specify a path to avr.gpr
>
> no, if the path of avr.gpr is set in your ADA_PROJECT_PATH global env


Thanks for the tip.  I must have missed the ADA_PROJECT_PATH in the
docs somewhere, because as soon as I set that variable, I was able to
compile the project and generate my binary.  The LED stays lit and
does not flash, but at least I have something to work on now. :)

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Warren]

b.robinson.jp@gmail.com expounded in news:1db702dd-3289-4e76-98fe-
08ab4bae38e1@v8g2000yqe.googlegroups.com:

>>.. I was able to
> compile the project and generate my binary.  The LED stays lit and
> does not flash, but at least I have something to work on now. :)

Check that you have exactly the right part specified for
compiling the unit. What happens is that the object code
may be compatible, but the configured SRAM size is not. This
is critical in the main program, where it initializes the
stack pointer (SP) at startup.

I ran into this when building for atmega328, which supports
a 2K SRAM. I was using an atmega168 with a 1K SRAM instead,
but is otherwise completely compatible with the 328.  

So everything would work until you _called_ something. The
called routine might work (if it needed no local vars or kept
them in registers). But when it would try to return to the
calling program, it would go west. Building for the 328 
sets the SP 1K higher than the 168 address wise, where 
there is no SRAM. So a return would go to address 16#FFFF#,
since FF is what "no memory" returns.

Compiling _libraries_ for a bigger part is ok, since it 
doesn't have to initialize the SP.  But the main program 
has to be "right on" in this respect.

In your case, I suspect that the delay routine is not
returning properly. This strongly hints at the stack 
size problem. So check that MCU= parameter (I had to
get a magnifying glass out to read my chip).

Warren

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[b.robinson.jp]

Thanks for the suggestion.

I do have the right chip number (I verified it on the surface of the
IC too), and I do have the right IO port and pin number (verified with
the C program).  The C version compiles and runs as expected, so I
think I'm going to have to study the bootstrapping process and get my
hands wet.

On Aug 27, 8:51 am, Warren <ve3...@gmail.com> wrote:
> b.robinson...@gmail.com expounded in news:1db702dd-3289-4e76-98fe-
> 08ab4bae3...@v8g2000yqe.googlegroups.com:
>
> >>.. I was able to
> > compile the project and generate my binary.  The LED stays lit and
> > does not flash, but at least I have something to work on now. :)
>
> Check that you have exactly the right part specified for
> compiling the unit. What happens is that the object code
> may be compatible, but the configured SRAM size is not. This
> is critical in the main program, where it initializes the
> stack pointer (SP) at startup.
>
> I ran into this when building for atmega328, which supports
> a 2K SRAM. I was using an atmega168 with a 1K SRAM instead,
> but is otherwise completely compatible with the 328.  
>
> So everything would work until you _called_ something. The
> called routine might work (if it needed no local vars or kept
> them in registers). But when it would try to return to the
> calling program, it would go west. Building for the 328
> sets the SP 1K higher than the 168 address wise, where
> there is no SRAM. So a return would go to address 16#FFFF#,
> since FF is what "no memory" returns.
>
> Compiling _libraries_ for a bigger part is ok, since it
> doesn't have to initialize the SP.  But the main program
> has to be "right on" in this respect.
>
> In your case, I suspect that the delay routine is not
> returning properly. This strongly hints at the stack
> size problem. So check that MCU= parameter (I had to
> get a magnifying glass out to read my chip).
>
> Warren

Re: USB Boarduino on AVR-Ada Tutorial

[Charmed Snark]

b.robinson.jp@gmail.com expounded in news:3be87447-5b06-4fcc-a0ed-
7037659b81a5@m1g2000yqo.googlegroups.com:

> Thanks for the suggestion.
> 
> I do have the right chip number (I verified it on the surface of the
> IC too), and I do have the right IO port and pin number (verified with
> the C program).  The C version compiles and runs as expected, so I
> think I'm going to have to study the bootstrapping process and get my
> hands wet.

Another thing you can try is to code your own delay
loop. Just do something in a loop that doesn't get
optimized away (sometimes tricky).  Then if it
works with your delay routine, you know something is
up with the called on.

You might need the help of the:

pragma Volatile(Variable);

in your own delay loop. Otherwise, if you compile with -Os,
you should be ok.

Warren