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Miscellaneous

A collection of the remaining significant sections.
A tour through the features of the Make Controller Board.
Page 4 of 4.

Power

The SAM7X runs at 3.3V (and internally at 1.8V). The Controller Board can be powered from a 3.3V source (as it is when connected to the Application Board) or it can be run from V+ (a DC supply from 7V to 12V). In this case, a small on board regulator provides the 3.3V. The onboard regulator can provide 3.3V for a limited amount of external circuitry.

The 3.3V line is protected against momentary higher voltage application by a TVS diode but it will not last long if higher voltages are applied for more than a second or two.

EEPROM

In addition to the on chip memory of the SAM7X, on the Make Controller there is an additional 32kB of EEPROM for providing byte-by-byte permanent storage. While the Flash memory on the chip is ample, it can only be written a sector (256 bytes) at a time, and only from code running in RAM, so an additional form of permanent storage is very useful. EEPROM can be written a byte at a time and is used to store things like the board's serial number, the assigned IP address, etc.
controller_eeprom.png

IO

In addition to the larger-scale devices described above, the SAM7X chip provides many more devices and general IO pins. Access to as many of these as possible are provided on the connectors, J1 - J4.
controller_connections.png

Firmware

The SAM7X is based on the very popular ARM7TDMI core. There is an open source toolchain (GCC etc) and many online discussion boards filled with people using these processors.

All of the hardware features on the board require software to set them up and to make them work. There are two approaches to programming the MAKE Controller Kit - either start from the very minimalist tiny project which presents a very small codebase from which the microcontroller can be programmed, or the opposite approach can be taken, to start with a very complete project we have supplied called heavy.

Using tiny will require a more in-depth understanding of the processor since there are fewer builtin facilities, but for those who want to wring every ounce of speed and flexibility from their systems, this will be the way to proceed. For others who want to benefit from an operating system, TCP/IP stack and other niceties, the larger heavy. codebase will be the best place to start.

See Programming The Make Controller Kit for more details.

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