Hello and welcome to AVR TV. My name is Eivind Sivertsen and I will be your host. Since this is our first issue, some clarification is in order. AVD TV is new series of podcast produced entirely from the ATMEL AVR design centre in Norway. We will present material about ATMEL’s AVR line of microcontroller products and how they are deployed to everyday life in the real world. We are going to focus on two types of broadcasts.

The regular issues contain mix material about new devices, software, reference material and general happenings in the world of AVR. They will be like and AVR news flash, much like what you’re watching right now. Our in-depth issues will present more in-depth material about any chosen topic, all picked from the 8 or 32-bit AVR product ranges, our development tools and software. It could for example be a live demo or software tutorial or a closer look at elements of power-saving features of the AVR product ranges. Both these types of issues will be released at irregular intervals starting at about once a month. So it will be up to you to stay tuned.

If you want to know more about podcasting and how to subscribe or download a podcast, you can visit the link at the bottom of the screen (http://www.avrtv.com/info) and get some more information about how to do this.

Up until now, all AVR development software and documents like datasheets, application notes and white papers have been distributed on the internet as well as the technical library CD. Now, the technical library CD will be split into two discs, one containing material for 8-bit AVR and one for AVR32. The AVR32 volume will contain all datasheets, application notes and software tools for development with the AVR32 products but there will be no Linux material. However, the data package formerly known as the STK1000 board support package will contain all the Linux material and its name will change to AVR32 Linux board support package. This CD now contains all documentation and software to get started with Linux development on the AP7000 family and it supports two AVR32 development kits to begin with. Those are the STK1000 and the Network gateway. You will find Linux core, Linux drivers, complete tool chain including compiler, binary utilities and debugging software and more. You can see some of the included software on the screen right now.
All of this can be downloaded from our web site or you will find it on a CD included in development kit that you buy.

Embedded World in Nürnberg is the top event when it comes to innovative embedded technologies. Suppliers and buyers from all over the world meet here every year and almost 13 thousand professionals visited Embedded World in 2006. Hardware, software, tools or services, it is all here on 23 thousand square metres of display space. Of course AVR products are also represented. On our stand this year you would find several exciting products, including the AP7000 32-bit application processor and UC3 32-bit microcontroller, demos of the AVR Z-Link solution, the AT90 USB products and more. Our colleague Andreas was there to demonstrate AVR picoPower technology.

So we are here at AVR microcontroller stand Andreas what are you displaying?
At this time I’m displaying the picoPower range of MegaAVR microcontrollers. It is the industry leading in high-performance low-power microcontrollers. Many people think that its just one thing that makes it have low-power consumption. But the picoPower AVRs are actually a combination of different things we did to improve our overall power consumption. First of all we have zero power 32 kHz oscillator. This enables us to have power save numbers down to 650 nanoamps with the 32 kHz oscillator running. We also have a sleeping brownout detector that gives you full protection in active mode and at the same time gives you zero power consumption penalty in the deeper sleep modes. We also have power reduction register that enables you to disable units or the part you do not need to further reduce the current consumption. We also have another register that disables digital inputs which is very useful if you’re using analogue values on some pins. In addition to this you have full 1.8V operation. What I mean by full is that not only that the core run but you can also write and read to flash and I2 and you also have the brownout detector levels in this range. We also have state with ATMEL proprietary low-leakage process that gives us power-down numbers in the range of 100 nanoamps. And I’ve also listed a feature that we have on all Mega AVRs and Tiny AVRs, it is a technique called flash sampling that gives you lower power consumption when the core is running on normal clock frequencies.

Thank you guys from Nürnberg, and that’s it for this time actually. So, in our next issue we intend to present something completely new, so stay tuned and see you next time.
Take care, bye, bye.