Chameleon-AVR Nurve Networks, Chameleon-AVR Datasheet - Page 248

• Manufacturer Part Number: Chameleon-AVR
• Description: MCU, MPU & DSP Development Tools AVR8 & PROPELLER DEV SYSTEM (SBC)
• Manufacturer: Nurve Networks

Specifications of Chameleon-AVR

• Processor To Be Evaluated: AVR 328P
• Data Bus Width: 8 bit
• Interface Type: USB, VGA, PS/2, I2C, ISP, SPI
• Operating Supply Voltage: 3.3 V, 5 V
• Lead Free Status / RoHS Status: Lead free / RoHS Compliant

as long as you have done that once before writing (or know that the FLASH is already erased) then you call
Flash_Write(…) and write one or more bytes anywhere in the FLASH, once again, call Flash_Close() when you’re done.
Summary
In this chapter, you not only learned about the cool 1 MB Flash memory the Chameleon has, but got a taste of file transfer
protocols. Hopefully, you can take our 30 minute X-Modem file transfer function and spend a good day on it and really
make it robust!
32.1 Native Mode / Bootloader mode
Currently, there are two ways to use the Chameleon AVR:
The bootloader mode is convenient since the Arduino tool can download to the Chameleon (or Arduino) with nothing more
than a serial port. The native mode is nice since you have full control and you can write large complex programs that take
up all the space of the AVR, download them into the AVR and not worry about the bootloader section getting corrupted,
etc.
However, you do not have to use the Arduino bootloader alone… There are a number of bootloaders, in fact, the Arduino
bootloader is nothing more than the Atmel standard application note bootloader slightly modified. Thus, you can make
your own bootloader, use Atmel’s, and so forth along with your own copy of the GNU GCC AVR tools and then program
on Linux, Windows, Mac, or any other operating system the GNU GCC tools are available on. The bottom line is that all
the bootloader does for us, is allow a “serial protocol” to communicate to the AVR chip and FLASH its memory with a
program. This saves you the $29-39 of a AVR MKII ISP programmer, that’s about it.
Bootloader Mode: with the Arduino bootloader pre-loaded into FLASH memory.
Native Mode: with AVRStudio generating a complete FLASH image.
TIP
There is also a “chip erase” function supported by the FLASH memory that erases the
whole chip. We removed this from the API since we were having trouble with it, the
datasheets are always a little buggy, and might have something incorrect, so check it
out – It’s a simple command, but first you need to unprotect the chip and of course write
enable then erase. It worked on some other versions of the FLASH chip, but these
version it doesn’t seem reliable. It WORKS – trust me, but there are some missing
details in the data sheet possibly, a step that we are omitting with these new chips, so
we deleted the function this time around.
© 2009 NURVE NETWORKS LLC “Exploring the Chameleon AVR 8-Bit”
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