arduino with internal oscillator on 1Mhz

we were discussing changing the clock frequency in software.

you can't change the voltage in this way.

here are a couple of options:

  1. buy an arduino that will run on 3.3V (e.g. arduino pro mini)

  2. build a circuit like the Adafruit minty boost that takes 2 x AA and gives you 5V. This is useful if you also have other parts needing 5V anyway. I did it myself very recently.

I do have the 3.3v arduino pro, it is not the mini however. http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9221

Someone had mentioned earlier in this thread that voltage was linked to clock frequency, so thats what I was going off.

I did find a 3.3 volt dc-dc converter circuit that is now in the mail. That should work for sure. I was hoping to keep power consumption as efficient as possible by using extremely low voltage and not needing the loss in a dc-dc conversion, but I'll explore saving power with watchdog/sleep instead.

Thanks.

Someone had mentioned earlier in this thread that voltage was linked to clock frequency, so thats what I was going off.

Couldn't spot that statement just now, but... looking at the datasheet for the ATmega328P it does say that it will run at:

1.8-5.5V for a clock of 0-4MHz,
2.7-5.5V for clock 0-10MHz and
4.5-5.5V for clock 0-20MHz

So running at 4MHz in principle should mean you can go down to 1.8V which would give you decent battery life on AAs I guess.

Trouble is that if you're using the clock tweaks described previously then you'll still need to boot up at full clock speed first. Hmmm!

(You would probably need to connect Vcc on the pro direct to your supply as well, rather than going through U2, whatever that is - presumably a regulator.)

Sounds like it would be easier to reprogram a 4MHz bootloader into the 328, really.

I'd be interested to know how you get on.

Hmm, interesting. I don't have any special hardware to burn a bootloader so I guess this project will have to go on hold. Something I'll circle back to as I am interested in revising this project to be low power.

I've got a stand alone battery prowered 328 project that runs off 3 AAs - it "works ok" but reading here is sounds like I'm on the edge of it running successfully at 16MHz.

I was considering dropping the crystal down to 8MHz to give me a wider power margin - Comms is not an issue as I'm programming the 328 in an Arduino then taking it out and dropping it in my PCB.

But it sounds like just changing the crystal won't work either and it will require a software tweak too - is that correct?

Cheers

As I understand it, clock speed is hard-coded into the bootloader, so changing the crystal isn't enough to change the speed. You would need to program a new bootloader in as well.

Given what we've been discussing about clock dividers above, it would seem that changing the crystal isn't actually necessary - a bootloader that sets the clock divider would suffice.

But without the capability to reprogram the bootloader that's going to be a bit awkward. Ho hum.

Cheers

If you have a windows machine and can solder a 4-way header onto your standard-format arduino (diecimila, duemilanova etc) then you can reprogram the bootloader:

http://www.geocities.jp/arduino_diecimila/bootloader/bitbang_w_ide_en.html

When I last tried with a mac (July 09) it wasn't possible using the mac's FTDI driver. Instead I used Windows running under parallels.

See also this post/thread: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1258854659/7#7

Marvin Martian, why do you think you would need to reprogram the bootloader?

You also said

Comms is not an issue as I'm programming the 328 in an Arduino then taking it out and dropping it in my PCB.

So when you want to reprogram the sketch on the 328, pull it out of your PCB, replace the 328 in your Arduino (which still has the 16MHz crystal) and re-program the sketch there.

[edit]I know there are timing issues with some of the libraries when they are used with a crystal other than the 16MHz one. But it still seems that is separate from the bootloader issue. If the logic in the sketch cannot be adjusted for a lower crystal speed, there is no point in changing the bootloader anyway. If the logic can be adjusted or does not need to be adjusted, the procedure I outline above should still be valid without needing to reprogram another bootloader onto the 328. At power-on, the standard Arduino bootloader may take a little longer (at the reduced crystal speed) to recognize that there is no data coming in on the serial port, but it should eventually time out and start the sketch anyway, right?[/edit]

Marvin Martian, why do you think you would need to reprogram the bootloader?

Because of what mungbean said earlier:

As I understand it, clock speed is hard-coded into the bootloader, so changing the crystal isn't enough to change the speed. You would need to program a new bootloader in as well.

So I'm still confused as to whether this is or is not necessary :-/

Spookyman166

Why reprogram the arduino when you can just buy a crystal for 2 bucks

Personaly I have a box full of old crystals I'd like to use up. As I am presently at a river mouth about to head to sea I would have to allow two days to tie up ,catch a cab 40Ks to the parts shop, buy my crystal and catch a cab back.

I find it cheaper to reprogram it.
Its all a matter of your own circumstances and then how narrow or broad your vision is.

Marvin I am using a 14.890MHz crystal in an ATMega8 because of the above . To get the chip to run I have to change the Makefile and recompile the bootloader allowing for this crystal speed . I also have to create a board in "boards.txt" to get an entry for my board

If I program the chip with a sketch in a standard duelmilanov board with a 16MHz crystal and put a standard bootloader on the chip first it will all go off OK. When I put it back in my experimental board with the slower crystal the sketch will run just a little slower but not that I can notice ,however I cannot upload another sketch to it unless I put it back in the standard board

Marvin Martian -- if all you want to do is reduce power consumption, then you can change the clock speed once you've booted (in your setup function), as described above.

I posted some test figures earlier in the thread, showing the reduction in current for various clock speeds. If it's possible to put the arduino to sleep for longish periods of time when it's not doing anything, then this will save power further.

If you want to run on a LOWER VOLTAGE, then you may need to reprogram the bootloader to get the arduino to bootup on that lower voltage, depending on how low you want to go.

I'm basing this assumption on what we found in the ATmega328 datasheet, again mentioned earlier in the thread.

I'm beginning to think it would be GREAT to have a slightly modified bootloader that selected clock frequency based on some jumpers on the board. Anyone fancy giving us an early christmas present...? :wink:

Back on page 1 wolfpaulus said

The last thing that needs to be done is adjusting the Arduino IDE preferences file: ~/Library/Arduino/preferences.txt on the Mac and C:\Documents and Settings<USERNAME>\Application Data\Arduino\preferences.txt on Windows:
The build.f_cpu preference needs to be set to 1000000L

I see that on Linux "preferences.txt " is in the library directory and I could find no mention of "build.f_cpu".

Is this now obsolete ?

because changing the crystal will stop the downloader from working unless you reprogram and reflash it.

I'm working at a similar issue.
What i want to do is use a 3.579545 TXCO as external clock source.
Now i do all the things i found.

My list is:

  1. Change at makefile, Xtal value, BPS value for that who have less error, for this case is 9600BPS (I use AVR calculator to analize this)
  2. Change all the fuse bits to use an external clock source (H fuse = d0)
  3. Rebuild the .HEX file
  4. Include a new CPU at boards.txt, in that change all again, xtal freq, buse bits, serial speed.

But i can download a scketch file to the CPU, in fact i never see the E0 when de CPU runs loading the scketch HEX file. :stuck_out_tongue:

I was doing the maths about this:
UBRRH = (((F_CPU/BAUD_RATE)/16)-1)>>8; // set baud rate
UBRRL = (((F_CPU/BAUD_RATE)/16)-1);
UCSRB = (1<<RXEN)|(1<<TXEN); // enable Rx & Tx
UCSRC = (1<<URSEL)|(1<<UCSZ1)|(1<<UCSZ0); // config USART; 8N1

But it's OK and the maths of this and the obtained from the AVR calculator are the same, in fact the error at 3.579545 in 9600BPS is less that 0.2%.

Ideasssssss??? I'm stuck here :-[

Best Regards
Frank

is DONE!

Cheq this:
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1273962209 :o

This may be of interest to some who've been following this thread -- Peter Knight has written a library called Narcoleptic:

http://code.google.com/p/narcoleptic/

Library implementing sleep modes, allowing extremely low power consumption on Arduino based projects.
Narcoleptic uses the sleep functionality of the AVR microcontroller to almost completely shut down the entire CPU, just leaving a low power timer running to trigger the wake up.
Extract the download, and install in your Arduino Libraries directory. Restart Arduino and you will see the Narcoleptic library appear in the menus.
Syntax:
Narcoleptic.delay( time in milliseconds )
Note that Narcoleptic timings are only accurate to a few percent. Whilst sleeping, everything is stopped - including PWM outputs, the millis() timer, serial ports - everything. So code with this in mind.

Hi

is there a way to run narcoleptic on atmega8?

i just read 5-6 topics on how to use the internal oscilator

but i am also stuck in something

i can reprogram the fuses with avrdude and a usbtinyisp programmer
so the atmega will run on 8Mhz of the internal or 1Mhz

so far so good

now when get the hex from the blink code and upload it to arduino(without the bootloade)

and the 1sec is actualy 2sec (on 8Mhz) or 16(on 1Mhz)

ok i was expecting that

now i am changing olny that from the boards.txt file

atmega328.build.f_cpu=16000000L
to
atmega328.build.f_cpu=8000000L or atmega328.build.f_cpu=1000000L

then i remake the hex and upload it again to arduino

and the led blinks normanly in 1sec

but when i am changing the

delay(1000) in the code with the
delayMicroseconds (1000000)

it dosent work

so how can we fix that?

thanks a lot

*i dont care for bootloader - i dont use it anymore