have been digging around a bit, and it seems that quite a few folks have tinkered with setting up the Arduino IDE to work with a 1284p, with varying degrees of success. was just wondering if there are any plans to bring this device 'officially' into the IDE - ie, include support within the next version.
there is also the sanguino board, using the 644p, which will take a 1284p in the same socket. one approach would be to have entries in the board list as follows:
Sanguino, 644p, 16Mhz clock
Sanguino, 1284p, 16Mhz clock
a SECOND suggestion: add an 'expert' mode to the board list, where one can - instead of selecting a specific board - select device (168, 368, etc), clock speed, reset method, etc.
That would be neat - make the cryptic avrdude settings a bunch of menu choices, or a drop down screen with a bunch of check boxes to click on.
Sort of like integreting the stuff on this page
http://www.geocities.jp/arduino_diecimila/bootloader/index_en.html
644P and 1284P support in the official IDE would be wonderful. However I am not aware that the 'official' arduino IDE has ever allowed direct support for other then 'official' Arduino boards.
That is too bad as like with the Sanguino 644P where the manufacture does some initial support but fails to keep up and track with future IDE versions the user is kind of left stranded. I fear the same will happen for the 1284p unless there is some critical mass of qualified and knowledgeable people to take on that burden. When the new arduino 1.0 is finally out of beta I would bet there will be lots of things needing changed to continue to support 644p/1284p and other 'unofficial' avr processors.
Lefty
Haven't got the foggiest idea what the 1284p is or is not. But I have a pretty good idea that the Arduino is not a All-embracing development - it is there for the (relativly) few chips that are put on the Arduino board.
Having said that, it is open source and enybody can extend it. But will it help the small hobbyist or the newbie that even more variants are supported (with or without a GUI that allows "exotic" flags/fuses be set)? Me thinks not.
Just an opinion. Not flames intended.
the key point of the 1284p is that it has more resources (pins, flash, ram) but is still in a DIP package - that is, in a package that the average hobbyist can solder onto a piece of veroboard without any specialist equipment beyond a bog-standard soldering iron.
there are (as far as i could see) four devices available in DIP packages:
(part# flash, ram, eeprom, i/o pins)
168p: 16k, 1k, 512b, 23 (6 analog) - used in original arduino
328p: 32k, 2k, 1k, 23 (6 analog) - used in newer arduinos, drop-in upgrade
644p: 64k, 4k, 2k, 32 (8 analog) - used in sanguino
1284p: 128k, 16k, 4k, 32 (8 analog) - drop-in upgrade for sanguino
increasingly there seems to be a push by the sellers of 'official' arduino boards to move towards using SMD components, in particular the atmel processors themselves. this squeezes out the hobbyist who doesn't want to just buy a ready-made PCB. i feel one of the strengths of the audino platform is that one can develop using pre-made boards, then switch to a chip or two soldered onto veroboard for the 'final product'. we are losing that with SMD parts.
rr;
You summed it up nicely. The 1284p may very well be the end of the line for us AVR 8 bit DIP fans. I sure hope that there is made avalible a arduino standard board fitted with a 40 pin dip package ( like CrossRoads is working on ) and that all software support required is made avalible to us software challenged types. Not expecting 'official arduino' support but would like an easy to find, upload, and implement source for the needed support files (boot file, core library files, modified popular contributed library files? )
Lefty
Skyjumper has been working on a lot of the support files for his specialized 1284P board (mine is a more generalized version of it - I've been working on final tweaks for his, will get mine finished up soon - I want to add a place to plug in RF Rx or Tx modules if one wants to add same, will just be some holes if not).