Summary

• AVR32DB32 breakout
• UPDI+ programming header
• Status LED
• Reset button

What is it?

This board holds an AVR32DB32 microcontroller, providing access to all of the IO pins. It adds power supply decoupling capacitors, an LED, a button, and UPDI+ programming header to make a convenient self-contained development board for small microcontroller projects.

The LED is attached to the PF5 pin via a 2k2 current-limiting resistor.

The button is attached to the PF6 RESET# pin via a series resistor to prevent damage in case of drive contention. Note that the PF6 pin defaults to GPIO mode.

The board also provides a programming header in the AVR standard 2x3 layout. Note that this will requires a UPDI-capable programmer. An SPI-style ISP programmer will not work with this chip. This programming header also includes the USART.0 TX and RX signals in "UPDI+" layout, allowing single-cable programming and debug with a suitable programmer.

Finally, an extra 2-pin header is provided with another VCC and GND pin in case additional connections are required.

As this chip supports powering PORTC from a separate supply voltage, there is a dedicated power input pin for "VDDIO2". This pin must be powered in order to use the functions on PORTC.

Reference icons are placed next to the pins used by the USART, I²C, SPI, ADC, and DAC modules, and where the LED is connected, to remind you what functions those pins usually perform. In addition, the pins of the multi-voltage capable PORTC are indicated in reverse highlighting, to remind you of their function.

This board is supplied with two 16 pin header strips for the IO pins and one 2x3 pin for the programming connector.

AVR32DB32

The AVR32DB32 is one of the new AVR DB microcontrollers, containing xmega-style peripherals. These are more powerful and flexible than previous generations of ATmega and ATtiny chips.

This particular chip contains 32 KiB of flash and 4 KiB of RAM on an AVR CPU clocked at up to 24 MHz. It provides four 16bit PWM-capable timers, a 16bit realtime counter, three USARTs with fractional baud rate generator, two master/slave capable SPI interfaces, two I²C interfaces, three analog comparators, 12bit ADC, 10bit DAC and in total 27 IO pins split across four ports. It also provides a 8-channel event system and configurable custom logic block that can route events between peripherals without waking the CPU.

It is similar to the ATmega3208, and has identical pinout and peripheral pin mappings. It provides a higher resolution on both the ADC and DAC peripherals, and adds more copies of many other peripherals. It can run at the full 24MHz clock speed across the entire supply voltage range - down to 1.8V. It is also very similar to the AVR32DA32, with identical pinout and peripherals; adding the multi-voltage IO ability and a few extra peripherals such as the OPAMP module.

More information can be found on Microchip's website at https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/AVR32DB32

Why did you make it?

I wanted to experiment with the new AVR DB-series chips, but couldn't find any maker-oriented hardware for them.