RP6 ROBOT SYSTEM - 3. Hardware and Software Setup
3.2.2. WinAVR - for Windows
First of all we will install WinAVR.
Win
AVR however is – as already indicated by its
name – available for
Win
dows only
!
Linux users may skip this section.
WinAVR (pronounced “whenever”) is a package of useful and required tools for soft-
ware development with AVR microcontrollers in the C-language. Apart from GCC for
AVR target (which is called "AVR-GCC", more infos on this follow later on), WinAVR
also provides a comfortable source code editor called "Programmers Notepad 2",
which will also be used for software development for RP6. WinAVR is a privately or-
ganized project and the package is freely available on Internet for everyone. New re-
leases and further information may be found on the official project website:
http://winavr.sourceforge.net/
Just recently, ATMEL started to officially support the project and AVRGCC may now be
integrated into their integrated development environment AVRStudio. Programmers
Notepad 2 is better suited for our project and we will not describe AVRStudio here.
Nevertheless, you may also use AVRStudio for development with RP6 if you like.
The WinAVR installer can be found on the CD:
<CD-ROM-Drive>:\Software\AVR-GCC\Windows\
Installing WinAVR is very simple and self-explanatory – usually you do not need to
change any settings - just click on continue all the time!
If you use Windows 7 you have to use the latest Version 20100110 of WinAVR. This
should also work well with WinXP. If you run into trouble with the most recent version
of WinAVR, try one of the various older Versions (deinstall current version before)!
3.2.3. AVR-GCC, avr-libc and avr-binutils - for Linux
Windows users may skip this section!
Installing avr-gcc in Linux environments may become a little bit more complicated. A
few distributions already provide the required packages, but often the packages con-
tain obsolete releases without some of the required patches.
Most likely you will have to compile and install new versions.
We cannot refer to details for each of the countless Linux distributions, such as SuSE,
Ubuntu, RedHat/Fedora, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, Mandriva etc. varying in versions
and all their quirks. We will provide a general installation approach only.
This also applies to all following Linux topics in this chapter!
For your specific system setup, the following approach may not automatically be suc-
cessful. Often you will find help by searching "<LinuxDistribution> avr gcc" and by
varying the phrases in this search string. This is also a good idea for all other possible
problems, which may occur on linux systems! If you are having trouble with avr-gcc
installation, you might try to find a solution by visiting our forum or any of the numer-
ous Linux forums out there.
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