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Programming Arduino using Atmel Studio 6

Arduinos are based on Atmel microcontrollers, and they can be programmed using Atmels native IDE Atmel Studio 6. T he main reason to use Atmel Studio 6 instead of Arduino IDE is because it provides better perf ormance, Arduino IDE might be easy to use but it is slow because of inef f icient compilation. It takes more cycles to execute an instruction written in Arduino IDE. In this article, Ill be using a USBASP programmer, a custom low cost programmer made to program Atmels microcontrollers.

With it, youll need a command line tool called AVRDUDE which can be downloaded here.

Next, download Atmel Studio 6 here and install it.

Bef ore starting, youll need to add the USBASP programmer into Atmel Studio. Go to Tools > External Tools

Add a new tool and name it USBasp. Follow the conf iguration shown.

Arguments : -c usbasp -p m328p -F -U f lash:w:$(ProjectDir)Debug\$(ItemFileName).hex:i

m328p ref ers to AT mega328P, if youre programming another MCU, change it accordingly. Lets create a new project to test it out. Select GCC C Executable Project and give the project a name.

Next, select your MCU. Since Im using an Arduino Uno, itll be AT mega328P.

A project will be generated and you can use the code below in the main c f ile.

// Example Blink code // by Siew Wai Hung // ht t p://waihung.net # dene F_CPU 16000000L // Specify MCU speed so t hat delay is correct #include <avr/io.h>; #include <ut il/delay.h>; int main(void) { DDRB = 0b00100000; // set bit 5 high t o set PORTB,5 as out put // PORTB,5 is Digit al Pin 13 on t he Arduino while(1) { PORTB = 0b00100000; // set bit 5 high t o t urn on pin _delay_ms(500); PORTB = 0b00000000; // set bit 5 low t o t urn o pin _delay_ms(500); } } //

Click on Build > Build Solution to compile. Upon successf ul compilation, proceed to upload the code by going to Tools > USBasp

T he LED on the Arduino should blink if everything goes as planned.