Arduino under the Hood - AVR for Professionals

This is one of the most comprehensive AVR microcontroller courses available - designed to take you from Arduino hobbyist to embedded systems professional.

The Arduino library is convenient, but it hides the true power of the ATmega328P. In this course, you'll strip away the abstraction and work directly with the hardware: manipulating registers, configuring peripherals, and writing code that's faster, leaner, and dramatically more power-efficient. The result? Embedded systems that can run on small batteries for years.

Why this course matters: The concepts you learn here aren't limited to Arduino. They transfer directly to the entire AVR family -from the tiny ATtiny to the larger ATmega series - and provide a foundation for working with any microcontroller platform. Once you understand how hardware really works, you can build anything.

Hands-on from start to finish. Every topic includes practical exercises solving real-world problems. Stuck on implementation? Each exercise comes with progressive hints and fully-commented solutions.

Learn at your own pace. This course isn't linear - dive into whichever topics match your current projects and interests.

What You'll Master

Toolchain & Workflow

• The GNU Compiler Collection: understand every step from source code to executable

• Makefiles: automate your builds with targets, rules, and shortcuts

• Transitioning from Arduino to bare-metal AVR programming

Core Peripherals

• Timers, counters, and PWM generation

• Interrupts and event-driven programming

• Analog-to-digital conversion (including the built-in temperature sensor)

• Analog comparator

Communication Protocols

• UART/USART serial communication

• I²C/TWI for sensor networks

• SPI for high-speed peripherals

• 1-Wire and DHT protocols

• USI (Universal Serial Interface)

• Bit-banging: implement any protocol the hardware doesn't natively support

Power Optimization

• Sleep modes and wake-up sources

• Dynamic clock frequency scaling

• Selective peripheral shutdown

• Techniques that extend battery life from days to years

Memory & Security

• Using Flash memory for constants and runtime data

• EEPROM for persistent storage

• Fuse configuration: clock sources, lock bits, and brown-out detection

• Protecting your intellectual property

Development & Debugging

• Running AVR chips standalone on a breadboard

• Debugging with simulators, JTAG, and debugWIRE

• Programming via ISP (without a bootloader)

Bonus: Parallel Task Execution

• Implement concurrent operations on a single-core MCU

What You'll Walk Away With

By the end of this course, you won't just understand existing embedded code—you'll be able to write highly optimized implementations from scratch. You'll know how to squeeze every bit of performance and battery life from small microcontrollers, and you'll read datasheets with confidence instead of confusion.

The documentation is thick, but it won't be scary anymore.