Questions from a beginner

[mbilloo]

Hello,

This site caught my attention and I just had a few questions regarding V-USB and was hoping someone could answer them:

1) Is this device meant to allow someone to interface an external device to a PC using USB by having the AVR as an interface ? If I wanted to, could I hook up another microcontroller (e.g. another Atmel) where I could write a device driver for the second Atmel on the PC side and communicate with the second Atmel over USB ?

2) I didn't quite understand how to get the USB firmware onto the AVR ? There is a link on the Metaboard website on how to get firmware onto the AVR using USBasploader and USBasp, but I am confused. Do I have to by the USBasp to program the AVR ? Or, am I missing something that would allow me to directly download the firmware for V-USB without any additional hardware. Can someone please clarify this ?


Thanks for your time and hope somebody could help me out with my questions.

Regards,
M. Billoo

[christian]

You can use one AVR just as an interface to USB, but you can also implement your application firmware on it, depending on your real time constraints. In general, you don't need a second AVR.

When you build your first Metaboard, you need to flash the firmware somehow. Once the loader is flashed, you can program it with avrdude via USB. This first time programming is tricky, but any "dirty trick" programmer is sufficient. There are simple programmers available which connect to a parallel or serial port (no USB to serial/parallel converter, though). These programmers usually consist of some wires, not more. Ask google....