ecTiny841 is a compact low-cost 8-bit microcontroller board which is designed to be fitted into a breadboard. It includes the connectors and minimal components to fully run the microcontroller and it also offers the option to add an external crystal to generate a reference clock signal.
The board is ideal to get familiar with microncontrollers and learn how to program a simple but yet capable 8-bit microcontroller. The chip itself has 11 general purpose input/output pins and a good bunch of built-in peripherals.
ecTiny841 features:
- Atmel 8 bit-microcontroller model ATtiny841.
- Power input: 1.7 – 5.5 Vdc.
- 8 kB FLASH, 512 Bytes of SRAM, 512 Bytes of EEPROM.
- 11 general purpose input/output pins + reset pin.
- Internal 8 Mhz oscillator, maximum external crystal of 16 Mhz @ 5Vdc.
- 1 x 8-bit timer and 2 x 16-bit timers with 2 PWM channels.
- 10-bit ADC : 12 single ended external channels and 5 internal.
- 2 x Full duplex USARTs.
- 1 x SPI master/slave interface.
- 1 x I2C slave interface.
- The board includes 100 nF and 10 uF capacitors, programming connector and external connectors for every microcontroller pin.
- Small format: 20.7 mm x 16.3 mm.
All the microcontroller pins are placed in the side external connectors. B3 is the microcontroller Reset pin, B0 and B1 are used for the external quartz crystal if this were to be used instead of the internall oscillator.
ATtiny841 pin out diagram.
General purpose input/output pins. B3 Reset, B0 B1 external crystal pins.
V+ and G- are the power input pins, V+ will be connected to 5Vdc, 3.3Vdc, etc… and G- to its ground 0 Vdc. Warning! Reverting these connections could irreversibly damage the microcontroller and all the electrical components connected to it.
In the bottom face of the board there is the option of populating the board with an additional external crystal to create a clock signal source for the microcontroller. An external clock will produce a more precise and temperature stable oscillating frequency, the use of an internal oscillator would be totally adequate for all of those projects that don’t require very tight time tolerances (for further reading in this link)
External 16 Mhz crystal.
The reduced size of the board makes it ideal to integrate into a protoboard and rapidly test any hardware that could benefit from using a microcontroller working at 5 or 3.3 Vdc.
ecTiny841 in a protoboard.
ecTiny 841 + connectors.
ecTiny841 can be purchased from our shop at tindie:
Related articles and links:
- ecTiny841 schematic.
- ATtiny841 datasheet.
- External crystal vs internal oscillator.
- eleCrab 8-bit microcontroller tutorials.