Migrating to the 1284P

For the next steps in the neural network project, I'm upgrading the microcontroller from an Atmel ATMEGA328P (Arduino Uno) to an ATMEGA1284P. Although no "official" Arduino boards use the 1284P, unofficial Arduino boards files are available for the chip and it's a pretty simple matter to download them from GitHub here and add them to the IDE. You can also download the files from the developer's blog here where there is a fairly comprehensive write-up of the chip and the process of getting it going.

As an Arduino compatible controller the 1284P is not-too-shabby. It's available in a hobbyist and breadboard-friendly 40-pin PDIP package. The process of assembling your own circuit is essentially identical to the 328P - you can use the same 16Mhz clock crystal and 5V power regulator, just mind the pinout. In addition to the extra input/output, the 1284P sports 128K of flash memory for programs (4x the Uno) and 16K SRAM for variables and data (8x the Uno). The 16K SRAM is absolutely key here, because the neural network is a RAM hog. The 2K on the UNO was barely enough to run a demo, with nothing left over for an actual application.

A word of caution on the 1284P. There is a pesky hardware bug that affects serial comms on UART0, making communications on that port impossible and spontaneously resetting the controller when you try. The UART flaw is especially insidious because it appears to be inconsistent. It is more severe on some chips than on others, and on some it does not appear to be a factor at all. It's even possible that Atmel has fixed the problem on the later production runs but to my knowledge this is not confirmed. There is also a software fix which requires changing the low fuse setting in the boards file from 0xFF to 0xF7, which I tried but saw only partial improvement.

In general, once this flaw is known and understood, it's not such a big deal. The 1284P has three UARTs and in most cases the workaround is simply to avoid UART0. However, the bootloader provided at the above GitHub repository assumes UART0, and unless you have the chops to go in and rewrite the bootloader there is no easy workaround for that! If you're unlucky enough to have one of the troubled chips, you're probably not going to be able to get the bootloader going.

In the end I abandoned trying to use the bootloader and just load programs through the JTAG pins using the UNO I keep setup as an ISP programmer. (If you have the hardware you need to burn a bootloader, then you have the hardware you need to program without a bootloader.) It's a minor pain, especially since I'm also using serial comms to retrieve data from the 1284P, but for the moment the benefits far outweigh the inconvenience.

Otherwise, so far the migration to the 1284P has been surprisingly smooth with all of the various pin mappings and functionality working without issue. I've got two PWM outputs and four digital outputs going to the motor controller, another three digital outputs and three analog inputs for the IR sensors, and two digital inputs for the bumper switches. I'm also reading and writing to an I2C EEPROM and can send and receive over UART1.

October 7, 2013




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