Basic Atom & Robotics
by William Smith
I introduced the new Atom Nano chips from
BasicMicro.com in my last column,
and now there are more new development tools to help the beginner. There is
also a great robotics platform based on the Atom that is a great platform for the
beginner so I’ll give it a mention later since it’s built around the 28 pin Atom
interpreter chip. Let’s start with the Atom Nano chips.
Atom Nano Chips
Tpackages just like the original interpreter chips, but
now there is an 18-pin package based on the
he Atom Nano chips come in 28-pin and 40-pin
PIC16F88. You can now debug right in your circuit and
we’ll talk about this a little later. Table 1 shows the three
new chips and feature details.
The original Atoms cost more, but offered higher speed
than the Nanos because they relied on an external 20 MHz
resonator for the clock. This is an area that Nanos improve
on as far as simplicity. The Nano chips use an internal 8
MHz oscillator which means you give up about 2.5 times
the speed, but all you need is power and ground to run a
Nano, so it’s actually much easier to hook up. Being 2.5
times slower may sound like a lot, but in many applications
speed isn’t a major factor plus, the Atom Nano has more
Figure 1. Atom
Debugger Screen.
72 SERVO 04.2009
program memory space. The Nano chips also use the exact
same pin-out as the original interpreter chips, so if you have
a design that doesn’t need the higher speed, a Nano chip
can be plugged right in.
Atom Debugger
I mentioned the debugger in my last column, but I
wanted to show anybody new to the Basic Atom the
features this debugger offers. I borrowed some of this
information (with permission from the author) from
Chuck Hellebuyck’s book Programming the Basic Atom
Microcontroller that can be purchased from the SERVO
Magazine bookstore (
http://store.servomagazine.com).
The Atom debugger is a special tool that makes your
software run in slow motion so you can step through the
code. Once you use it, you won’t ever want to develop
without a debugger again. The Atom debugger is
completely controlled by software on the PC that sends
command codes to the Atom Nano chip. You only need the
serial programming connection to use the debugger. No
other hardware is required.
When you finish writing your program, you would
normally press the “Program” button to compile and
download your program into the Nano chip. To use the
debugger, you simply press the “Debug” button instead.
The difference between the Program button and the Debug
button is hidden. They both compile and then program the
Nano but the Debug adds another hidden step: It adds a
block of code to your program that is used to communicate
with the debugger software running on your PC.
When your program is running, the added debugger
block of code sends variable values, internal register values,
