tinyAVR Microcontroller Projects for the Evil Genius (Evil Genius Series)

This is a very entertaining book. Every book I've read aimed at gently introducing embedded MCUs tries to come up with unusual projects, but this book really delivers. Their LED-based flickering candle not only describes linear feedback shift registers in ordinary language, they show how they built the candle-shaped circuit boards and housing. The code and makefiles are on their website for downloading. They use WinAVR as their development tool, but I use Linux, not Windows. Also, I don't have on hand all the Atmel MCUs they use. But I renamed their MAKEFILE to makefile, changed the MCU selected in the makefile to one I had (from ATtiny13 to ATtiny25), and changed the programmer (to usbtiny). At that point avr-gcc was happy to build it and program my MCU. I haven't worked my way through very many of the projects yet (I have parts on order), and that brings me to my primary complaint: They don't specify all the components. This is mainly a problem with inductors, which come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. Which ones fit the board layouts they provide? My other complaint is about typographical and other minor errors. For instance, for project 1 they show two versions of the schematic: Figures 1-20 and 1-21. There is an error in 1-20, but that's the one I built the circuit from. I would have registered the error if I could have found a way to do that on their website.

I bought this book to get some idea on how I can utilize micro controller chip in my project. Therefore, all those schematics and explanation covering 34 projects are quite useful for me. For instance, I did not know about Charlie-plexing method that can drive n*(n-1) LEDs with just N pins. (for instance, you can drive 12 LEDs with just 4 output pins without additional components such as shift registers.) Unfortunately as other reviewers pointed out, program codes in kindle version are gibberish. However, you can download those codes from the link provided in the book (and in Kindle reader, those links are live) so it really does not matter other than making a note not to trust the code listing in kindle version. This is rather strange as at least in one place of the book (location 1807) there exists a readable code.Overall, I think this is the book with good value. was it worth $14? I think so.

tinyAVR Microcontroller Projects is a wonderful book for those just starting out and for those looking for a few ideas. While it does require a bit of pre-knowledge concerning electronics, it is written for the novice to understand. Unlike other project books for the PIC processors, this one does not just give you the circuit and code, they also provide an explanation of why various parts and choices are made...a wonderful concept. A little math (little more than E=IR) to explain values chosen, what the limits of the processors are, etc. No more guess work if you don't have exactly the same parts they show, or if you want to modify it for your own evil project. With a little humor thrown in to boot, this is a readable and informative book...the authors show that something more than a 'Hello world' project can be fun and easy.So, why did this book almost lose stars?? The book does NOT provide complete code, parts lists, circuit board drawings, etc. and to actually build the projects the downloads would be really nice. Unfortunately, the web site provided on the back of the book does not even acknowledge the existence of the book, and the other web site, mentioned within the text for every project throughout the book does not exist...well, until today. This evening (March 15,2011) this site now shows a drupal screen informing the site should be up by Mar 20...almost 2 months after the book started shipping.Alas, I could not convince myself to degrade the book's rating because the publisher couldn't get their act together. By the time the book went out, they should have had at least an info page, but they couldn't even answer my email beyond the auto response their system sends out. So, publisher gets 2 stars, book gets 5.

As a long time electronics hobbyist, but relative newbie to microcontrollers, I like the approach and the level of this book. But on my Kindle Fire (and on my PC's Kindle App) the code segments are completely unformatted - making them almost useless to to learn from. I just wrote to Amazon to see if there is any way to get this corrected, or will I need to "return" the book.I purchased the Kindle version of the O'Reilly "The Arduino Cookbook" at the same time, and it has none of the formatting problems.So get this book as a hardcopy, or don't get it at all.Edit Added July 18 2012 - Amazon had nothing to offer other than trying to redownload. Did that, no change in formatting. I "returned" the book for a refund with no problem.

Some time back I purchased a copy of 22 radio & receiver projects for the evil genius. What a load of rubbish that book turned out to be (See my review on Amazon).But undaunted I thought that, since I'm starting along the AVR programming path I'd try the "Tiny AVR microcontroller projects for the evil genius" and hopefully it was better than the previous book.Well it isn't.There are so many niggles about this book.It's badly written. The circuit diagrams are horrendous, upside down, a mixture of the right way round and upside down; so small as to be unreadable; it uses ex-mobile phone displays which are no longer available; all of the software has to be downloaded from a website but there is no way to work out what file belongs to what project, there are no layout diagrams for the printed circuits used (Just like the radio and receivers book).All in all this is yet another Evil Genius poorly produced collection of worthlessness.I think the most farcical section is that on designing and producing PCBs which actually assumes that you have a full CNC set up to mill your circuit board.Oh yes, right, we're all stinking rich aren't we?Then there's the absolutely useless section on writing code in C. This takes up a massive 12 sides of paper and is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.This truly is a horrendous book that in my opinion wont help you get the vaguest inkling of the power of Atmel's amazing Tiny series of AVRsOh and they make a big thing about the technique of Charlieplexing - yawn - tedious stuff and nothing new as it was proposed in 1995 and never really caught on due to inherent limitations.My advice is to save your money and certainly not waste it on this or any of these books.

This book is great.It has a lot of very nice projects. There is a lot of information about projects, even more background info.Let me parry the sour 2 star review.Looks like the author of that one was only looking for things to complain about.Yes, there are a lot of pages about programming in C.It's what these AVR microcontrollers makes tick! What did he expect, BASIC?I use those pages as a reference and learned a lot from themYes, there are also a lot of pages dedicated to makeing LED matrices work.That's what a lot of people do with microcontrollers, everybody loves blinkies! (well, sorta evuhrybuddy)Getting to know how to work those matrices is much, much harder without info as it is presented in this book.Yes, there are fun projects using the Nokia 3310 display.Even better: you can still buy those displays, now for only a few dollars!And yes, they are shipped worldwide.With the help of the C tut in the book you can alter the code to hack the projects.Yes, you need to work if you want to do that.Yes, there is a section about CNC milling.No (hey, a first "No" here!), i can never afford a CNC "studio".But the good news is: you don't have to read it!There's always this thing as an author: if you leave things out you get complaints, if you include things you get complaints.So, why not include them?Yes! (hey, the "Yes" is back! Starting to sound like a well-known infamous sportsman on a bike during a television interview...) Put them in and let the reader decide what is useful info.Yes, there is a section about Charlieplexing.Yes, the author did not invent Charlieplexing (ok, that "Yes" was cheated into this review by using questionable logic).Yes, Charlieplexing works on the projects in the book.So, you can build an auto ranging frequency counter by using Charlie.Should it be left out because somebody says Charlieplexing is no fun?No! (This "No" is actually... ah well forget it.)Yes, some circuits are drawn flipped to one side, i did not see any upside down.Who cares? The info is there and it is not any harder to read.OK, only drawbacks: double sided PCBs with SMT (that's too small to handle humanely) parts.So, in the PCB department they fail.But, you can always read the schematic and use a breadboard or perfboard.I think there are plenty of PCB designs going nowhere in the world, because builders use there own boards, be it perf, breadboard or whatever construction.For the PCB thing i should deduct a point, BUT because this book i also a handy reference guide for LED matrices, LCD screens and other things i will re-add the point.So there, "Yes" clearly outnumbers "No", with one "No" even.. ah well, you get the point.

This is a helpful book but it is short on detail, the nuts and bolts of getting your first project up and running. If you managed to get your project running then you have an enought knowledge and skill that is advance above this book.

Sonnenseite(n):- ein guter Überblick, auch einige Programmiertricks, und ein paar - auch recht unkonventionelle - Projekte.Schatten:- leider werden einige Seiten damit verbraten um zu zeigen, dass man für's Elektronikbasteln einen Lötkolben und ähnliches benötigt. Oder wie eine ganz spezielle PCB Fräsmaschine (Roland Modela MDX-20) funktioniert. Oder wie eine Orangenbatterie funktioniert. Dieser Platz geht dann leider dafür verloren, um detailliert den Sourcecode darzustellen bzw. zu beschreiben.- Die Interrupt-Programmierung im Speziellen wird nur ganz stiefmütterlich behandelt. Genau solches hätte ich mir von diesem Buch aber erwartet.- als Programmierer wird das STK500 von AVR verwendet, vor allem um auch Fuse-Bits zu setzen. Das STK500 war lange Zeit "das" Tool, ist aber mittlerweile in die Jahre gekommen (kein USB-Anschluss, und nicht jeder Serial-USB Adapter funktioniert mit diesem Board). Für ein Buch aus dem Jahre 2011 hätte ich mir etwas aktuelleres bzw. auch Alternativen erwartet.Fazit: ganz nett für den Einstieg. Im Internet findet sich weit mehr und besseres.

What I really appreciate is the introduction chapter which tells how the Tiny works under the hood. This helps to understand the working of the various projects. The projects are good and show various capabilities of the Tiny. The projects themselves are explained in great detail, both the SW and HW parts. All code is available from - [...] - which saves quite some typing.Appendix B about PCB making is imho too short to be an adequate introduction. Better read the book of Simon Monk "Make Your Own PCBs with EAGLE". Furthermore appendix C should be just another project of the book.