Programming and Interfacing ATMEL's AVRs

My GOLD standard for judging any book for its academic utility is very simple: if a book succeeds in explaining those concepts that others failed to address, then this one book is a clear winner. And, my latest book, "Programming and Interfacing ATMEL's AVRs by Thomas Grace" is one such book. My other books on AVR/Atmel microcontrollers had me unnecessarily struggle through their never-ending chapters, giving me nothing except confusion & boredom. I am one of those who do not give up so easily. I went back to Amazon.com to check for another Atmel/AVR text book, and purchased "Programming and Interfacing ATMEL's AVRs by Thomas Grace". What a big difference! All those concepts that seemed so cryptic now became so crystal clear (almost magically!). This magic I attribute to the author whose right approach towards teaching complex material (to beginners like me) made this book so student-friendly. This book passed my GOLD standard!! By the way, I am a 58yr individual. If at this age I could venture into high tech stuff, any one could, provided they have the right book to guide them through. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, especially someone making a fresh debut into the field of micro-controllers.

I am just starting to get into MCU (microcontroller) development at the hobby level. I program in my day job in C# but the idea of controlling objects in the real world really appeals to me. The learning curve with MCU dev is pretty darn sharp, and this book was very helpful with the initial understanding and implementation. If you are like me, you are going to be using a variety of resources, including books, web, and forums. After i decided i wanted to start with AVR chips, I looked around for what books were available. This one was the perfect starting point. This is not an exhaustive manual, but it runs you through the capabilities and usage of an Atmel AVR chip from the ground up. It includes copious examples of usage in both Assembly language and ANSI C. If you intend to use this book as a getting started aid for Atmel chips, you will be well-served without too much pain in the pocketbook.P.S. don't be spooked by the low number of reviews (4 at the time of this writing). The book gets the job done.

Actually surprisingly useful. Minimal coverage of the basics, unlike some books that dwell upon arithmetic. Should be read in conjunction with datasheets and Microchip example code. Fairly "studio" (and hence Windows) centric.The good,Not obsessed with macros/bit shifting and the like.Covers "settling" time for Data Direction Register.SBI PINB, PINBX for toggle of state of output pin (I had never heard of this before).Good explanation of comparators and their use with ramp waveform for A/D conversion.Good SPI coverage.Good interfacing device coverage, could have gone into big dollar items.Interrupt vectors, memory, eeprom.JTAG disable.Clever practical implementations.Less well covered (NB, to be fair these may be a bit obscure):HVP applications and methods.RST as output.SPI devices (varistors etc).Self programming (overlay).Low speed programming.External memory.avrdude, eclipse plugin, studio simulator, debugwire..Bit banging the non-UART tiny.

This book appears to be Thomas Grace's first excursion into the world of technical writing. It's unfortunate that Cengage/PTR didn't assign a competent technical editor or reviewer to help him arrange and focus the material.The author doesn't seem to have a well-defined notion of his target audience. On the one hand, he seems to be writing for people who've never seen a computing device (e.g., "this is a bit, this is a byte"). On the other hand, he'll refer to some complex sensor in a single sentence and tell the reader to "just go read the manufacturer's data sheet."His writing style has a stream-of-consciousness quality that makes it very hard to follow. It's almost as though he walked around with a tape recorder for a few days, captured a bunch of random thoughts about AVR programming, then had his notes transcribed and sent to the publisher. He frequently leaves out important details, or fails to explain WHY a particular item of information is important.His ability to explain concepts is limited. His discussion of indirect addressing doesn't really explain the basic concept. (Aside: From my past experience teaching assembly programming to novices, I can tell you, this is an area where people easily get confused. If this book is targeting beginners, Grace's explanations will only add to the confusion.)He uses nonstandard, quirky terminology. For example, when he talks about managing registers during a subroutine call, he refers to "pushing" and "pulling" bytes to/from the stack. "Pulling" ?! The machine instructions are PUSH and POP. Not PUSH and PULL. Generically, you can talk about saving and restoring.His discussion of hardware techniques contains important errors. For example, there's not a single mention anywhere of the need to de-bounce a pushbutton switch. His code examples just assume that all will go well if you just keep sampling the GPIO line...A nastier problem is that he doesn't use snubber diodes to catch flyback EMF from inductive loads, such as relays or brushed DC motors. This is a fundamental design issue, and it can result in blown transistor -- or possibly even a blown AVR chip. If this book is intended for novices, Grace is teaching some very poor habits.The physical book also has problems:- Photos appear to have been taken with a low-res phone camera, then run through a bitmap editor to make them fit some fixed-size slot on the page. The result is a bunch of grainy B&W images that have been stretched or squeezed into silly aspect ratios.- Drawings and circuit diagrams have similar problems.- The printing runs just about from edge to edge on each page; there's almost no margin anywhere.Bottom line: I wouldn't recommend this book at all. In fact, I returned it for a refund.

D+ muito bom mesmo!!!!

On est entre l'assembleur et le c, avec bcp de généralités en introduction (rappel algèbre booléen...).Bref pas évident de trouver son public