32mHz ARDUINO PROJECTS.. ATMega328P etc...

UPDATE : I have tried & tested 32MHz crystal oscillators on many ATMega328, ATTiny85, and ATTiny13A (all 20MHz variants) I have decided to push things to the limit...

I have ordered one 40mhz oscillator for testing.. these things run at a juicy 40ma plus more current drawn from the microprocessor because of the extra speed.

I shall revisit with my results soon :slight_smile:

Do you feel the need for speed?

ChilliTronix:
Do you feel the need for speed?

IMO..

Not just speed, but the thrill of the chase.

Ray

For a while, I was thinking that one of the new XMega chips running at 32MHz would be a useful addition to the Arduino line. Now, I just think that anyone who needs the speed should jump to one of the ARM boards.

Yes, make those LEDs blink really fast ... even faster delay() for button pushes ...

Ha ha, thanks all !!

westFw, I have been thinking about the arm stuff, even to the point of getting several stm32f1 boards after the (now very long) topic was started on here.

for me its not a simple jump, I write in C AND assembler, the task of learning the 32bit assembly and all the register manupulation didnt suit me too well as I am just about coping with 8 bit !!

:slight_smile:

Crossroads, it is mainly for multicolour VGA purposes, I really need the speed !!

for me its not a simple jump [to ARM]

This online class has just started, and I highly recommend it. If you already have experience programming AVRs in C and assembly, you'll be well ahead of "median" background, but it's STILL a good introduction to ARM programming...

Cheers WestFw, I think I would need to sign up as I cant see much on that page/link

Link with no-login-required info (also, previous post "fixed"): Embedded Systems - Shape The World: Microcontroller Input/Output

Interesting, I had found I could run at around 24 MHz (note the M) with a crystal but not faster. Now I am motivated to try faster clock inputs, excluding crystals.

AWOL:
I very much doubt that :wink:

Annoyingly, the proper capitalization of 1,000 is k but 1,000,000 is M.

Yes Nick, I got that far too, but then realised I had to switch to a TTL clock gen for higher speeds as the micro wasnt able to drive the crystal or something, I cant remember the full reason but thats in the past now

:slight_smile:

@mcnobby,

I have looked for the crystal that you are using but, have not found a cheap way to buy a crystal just for playing around. However, I ordered a breakout board last night that may prove interesting!
Adafruit Si5351A Clock Generator Breakout Board - 8KHz to 160MHz

The breakout board is not practical for a finished product but, it will allow me to find out how fast an Arduino can go. :slight_smile:

cyclegadget:
I have looked for the crystal that you are using but, have not found a cheap way to buy a crystal just for playing around.

I have been using THESE. they are about £0.19p each in qty of 10, but they are surface mount which can be a problem if you just use standard mount

I did find some surplus stock standard mount ones on ebay, bought a load for testing/playing very cheap, I have had a look but cant find them anymore

Neat stuff. Sounds like a good omen for trying to make the ATTiny's that are normally spec'ed only to 12mhz run at 16mhz like a normal Arduino.

Which ATTiny's are spec'ed at 12MHz? The t84 and t85 are both rated up to 20MHz...

Hi. Are you still here? I wonder how you can remove the crystal and replace it with an external clock without changing the fuse bits before. It seem a chicken and egg problem. Have you burned the bootloader with the fuse and then changed the circuit?

It is absolutely no problem, but once if the chip is set to use external clock or crystal, it (clock signal generally) must be present otherwise the MCU will not start. So, just replace the crystal. Of course, the bootloader have to be changed for exact frequency.
However I'm not recommending to use 32MHz. I have some experience with overclocking on ATmega1284P. Some features doesn't work at higher frequency as 25MHz, e.g. prescaler for ADC. I had the best results with 24MHz. The MCU works reliably at 24MHz, no getting a heat and all features seem to work.
...but 328P can be different story!

Hi All

I am currently overclocking an ATTiny13A to about 16MHz on INTERNAL resonator, just by setting it to 9.6MHz internal resonator, then writing OSCCAL to 255 (I think only 7 bits are actually used), this then doubles the 9.6MHz internal clock approximately. If you dont need to worry about exact timing then this is great fudge.

I use this for receiving and decoding an 800KBPS data stream and driving a servo from the data and it works a treat as I continually sync on the start/high transition of each bit and sample in the middle, so probably even 1MHz either way would still work

The ATTiny13A does not have pins for a standard xtal, and can only be driven externally by a TTL Clock oscillator, so I chose the method above for cost and simplicity

This overclock can also be done on an ATTiny45/85, so I believe (although you can use a standard xtal with those)

Bob

I have done many ATMega projects using 32MHz TTL clock oscillators and not found any heat problems, in fact not noticed and heat given off at all. I cant verify that any new microcontrollers still work as well since Microchip took over the AVR range and I believe they opened a new fabrication plant in Scandinavia and reduced some of the specs on devices from 20MHz down to 16MHz.. early 2017 from my memory anyway !