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iMartyn edited this page Mar 11, 2013 · 14 revisions

How to use a Minimus board with Arduino

Installing Minimus board package

The minimus board support directory should be placed in the hardware subdirectory of you sketchbook directory. On a linux system you can do this with:

mkdir -p ~/sketchbook/hardware
git clone git://github.com/pbrook/minimus-arduino.git ~/sketchbook/hardware/minimus

If using Windows I suggest creating the hardware directory inside your sketchbook directory, then extracting the github Download as zip archive there.

On OSX

place the above minimus directory into /Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Resources/Java/hardware/

avr-gcc used by the Arduino IDE is too old to support atmega32u2, luckily there are nice people that maintain an AVR Crosspack for OSX here: http://www.obdev.at/products/crosspack Download and install that

By default it install into /usr/local/CrossPack-AVR while the Arduino IDE expects it to be in its app directory, so we do the 'ol switcharoo

cd /Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Resources/Java/hardware/tools/
mv avr avr-original
ln -s /usr/local/CrossPack-AVR /Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Resources/Java/hardware/tools/avr

Rejoice

On Windows

The minimus directory needs to go into your My Documents\Arduino folder.

The avr-gcc with the Arduino IDE for windows is out of date. You can either re-compile this yourself for windows, find someone who already has or you can download a full archive of the Arduino IDE and avr-gcc (combined with a snapshot of other minimus specific libraries).

Flashing the bootloader

The Minimus comes with a DFU bootloader installed. This is fine for "native" avr-c development, but does not play well with the Arduino IDE. To install the Arduino bootloader you will need an ISP programmer (e.g. and AVRISP mkII or Clone based on a Minimus or an Arduino running the ArduinoISP sketch). See below for the correct connections. Once connected fire up the Arduino IDE, ensure the correct board and programmer are selected, and click Tools/Burn Bootloader.

This only needs to be done once. The device should now appear as a serial port like other Arduino boards. A glowing red LED indicates the bootloader is running. Windows users may need to install the Arduino Leonardo drivers.

Limitations

I2C (aka TWI, i.e. the arduino "Wire" library) is not supported.

No analogue inputs. Analogue comparator support not implemented.

Servo library and tone function untested.

PinOuts

Pins are numbered 0-23 anticlockwise starting from the USB connector, as in the diagram below. Pins 11 (Ground), 20 (Reset) and 23 (Vcc) are not accessible from Arduino sketches. Pin 7 will be used to indicate USB activity if not otherwise used.

Pin Diagram