Practical AVR Microcontrollers: Games, Gadgets, and Home Automation with the Microcontroller Used in Arduino

CHAPTER 3

Arduino and the Naked AVR

In the introduction we looked at the trade-offs involved in using just AVR chips for projects as opposed to a packaged AVR-centric system such as Arduino.

The essential logic is this: MCU (MicroController Unit) chips are available very cheaply and so it’s viable to use them, in even the simplest of projects, to add functionality and flexibility you could never get from a non-MCU approach.

Packaged systems intentionally abstract the core hardware; the stated aim of many of them is to attract people with more interest in creativity than electronics. They do this by abstracting the core computing function as a ...