ECET 179 at Purdue University gives instruction for using AVR Studio, a Windows only IDE for AVR Microcontrollers. Because of this I created a custom Makefile that is tailored to having a few shared libraries with new weekly projects. Created in Fall 2025 semester.

Note: This will require terminal understanding and some tinkering. If you do not want to do this and cannot use AVR Studio on your personal computer, please use AVR Studio on the lab computers. I am not responsible for any work that doesn't get done because of this Makefile. Use at your own risk.

While I am not responsible for any issues that occur, I would still be very willing to help debug and fix any issues people find. I am able to be reached by email at yoder177@purdue.edu or on discord at qyvo. Shoot me a message and I would love to help!

This Makefile depends on some AVR tools that need to be installed

On MacOS, make sure you have homebrew installed and then run the following:

brew tap osx-cross/avr
brew install avr-gcc avr-binutils avrdude tio

On Linux, install avr-gcc, acr-binutils, avrdude, and tio (optional: only needed if you want serial monitor) on your distribution of choice.

This Makefile expects a folder structure with libraries used in multiple labs in the libs folder and then each lab having its own folder with a main.c file in it which contains an int main() function. Here is an example folder structure:

├── lab0
│   └── main.c
├── lab1
│   └── main.c
├── libs
│   ├── library_a.c
│   ├── library_a.h
│   ├── library_b.c
│   └── library_b.h
└── Makefile

Note: Libraries in class were provided as a single c file. This means that you must split these files up yourself. See the section titled "Splitting Into C and H Files"

When using the Makefile, you will need to provide the upload port of the device. This will in all likelihood be in /dev. On MacOS it will look like /dev/tty.usbmodem101 where the number might be different. On Linux it will likely look like /dev/ttyACM0. Run ls /dev/tty* and look for something similar. You will also need to provide the folder that you have code in. In these examples, it is named lab0 but the folder could be named anything. An example command on a MacOS machine where you want to build the code in lab0 would look like this:

make PROJECT=lab0 PORT=/dev/tty.usbmodem101

Tip: You can change the default port by editing the Makefile. You will then not need to specify a port when running commands

To upload to the board, you append flash to the end of your command. This will upload it to the board immediately running your code. Example:

make PROJECT=lab0 PORT=/dev/tty.usbmodem101 flash

Any Serial Monitor will work to monitor. This means you can use the Arduino Serial Monitor, the VSCode Serial Monitor, pio device monitor, or anything else you want. However, if you just want to be able to monitor using the makefile, that is an option. Just replace flash with monitor and it will use tio to monitor in your terminal. To quit, press Ctrl-T then press Q. and it will go back to the terminal.

make PROJECT=lab0 PORT=/dev/tty.usbmodem101 monitor

Note: In order to see your printf statements in the serial monitor, you will need to use the serial library provided in class.

You are able to run the command with help in order to view terminal help.

make PROJECT=lab0 PORT=/dev/tty.usbmodem101 help

Because class provided libraries are in single c files, you will need to take that file and split it into an c file and a header/h file.

// Included Libraries
#include <stdint.h>
#include <avr/io.h>

// Define Statements
#define COOL_NUMBER 6

// Function Declarations (where we tell it that the function exists)
uint32_t add_cool_number(uint32_t num);

// Function Definitions (where we tell it what the function does)
uint32_t add_cool_number(uint32_t num) {
    uint32_t new_num = num + COOL_NUMBER;
    return new_num;
}

Given the following c file, we can split this up pretty easily. We are able to make a c file with the include statements (adding an include of library_a.h) and the function definition. In the h file we will put the included libraries, the define statements, and the function declarations.

library_a.c:

// Included Libraries
#include <stdint.h>
#include <avr/io.h>

// NEW LINE
#include "library_a.h"

// Function Definitions (where we tell it what the function does)
uint32_t add_cool_number(uint32_t num) {
    uint32_t new_num = num + COOL_NUMBER;
    return new_num;
}

library_a.h:

#ifndef LIBRARY_A_H
#define LIBRARY_A_H

// Included Libraries
#include <stdint.h>
#include <avr/io.h>

// Define Statements
#define COOL_NUMBER 6

// Function Declarations (where we tell it that the function exists)
uint32_t add_cool_number(uint32_t num);

#endif

If you notice the top 2 and bottom lines in the h file are new. This is a header guard. Make sure you include this in your h file and change the name on the first two lines to be the name of the file in all uppercase with no periods. If you are confused, I recommend watching this video.

I do my editing in Neovim and use clangd as my lsp. In order to get it to work, I created a .clangd file to give it the includes it needs. I just gave it a hard path to where my avr-gcc files were so this will need to be edited to fit your machine. I don't know if this is required for editors like VSCode but I suspect it is.