Atmel launches digital audio gateway kit

Atmel has unveiled the AVR32 ATEVK1105 digital audio gateway kit, demonstrating digital audio streaming, decoding and playback.

These audio capabilities serve the market of audio accessories and peripherals that connects home and car hi-fi audio systems to the digital age.

The kit is based on the AVR high-performance AT32UC3A 32-bit Flash microcontrollers and provides developers with a ready-to-use hardware/software platform and a variety of interfaces and evaluation capabilities to meet audio systems requirements.

The AVR32 CPU featuring DSP instructions is perfect for audio decoding tasks, and the UC3A handles two audio interfaces.

For high-quality stereo output, the chip has a stereo 16-bit bitstream audio DAC with internal FIR and comb filters.

For four-channel or full surround sound, an IIS interface is available for connection to an external audio codec.

Both interfaces are supported with drivers that make full use of the AVR32 peripheral DMA controller, which reduces the CPU overhead.

The ATEVK1105 board comes preloaded with software that demonstrates audio playback.

A booted kit will scan any USB mass storage device for MP3 or other audio files and play them back.

The kit's software will even scan the ID3 tag and present album, artist and song information on the 2in QVGA onboard display.

MP3 decoding from a USB mass storage device requires only a third of the AVR32's processing capacity, leaving headroom for running the operation system, streaming the data and refreshing the display.

Customers with a license from Apple are able to interface the kit to an Ipod or Iphone using an authorised Apple authentication chip adapter.

The AVR32 microcontrollers are built for high data throughput rates and feature dual-port SRAM, a six-layer databus and a multi-channel peripheral DMA controller to help speed things up.

This is required when the UC3A features a 100Mb/s Ethernet port, a 12Mb/s USB port, two 33Mb/s SPI ports, four high-speed USARTs, one IIS interface and two I2C compatible interfaces.

The USB port has on-the-go host function, allowing it to act as a host when connected to USB devices such as a keyboard, mouse, mass storage or audio.

For applications where the on-chip 512KB Flash and 64KB SRAM is not sufficient, the EVK1105 demonstrates how to connect an external SDRAM, serial Dataflash, SD card reader and USB hard disk or memory stick.

The ATEVK1105 also features connectors for future wireless expansion modules supporting IEE802.15.4/Zigbee and Bluetooth.

Atmel provides all the source code free of charge, including software drivers for all peripherals, TCP/IP stack and various USB class drivers.

This is available in the AVR32 Software Framework, a software library integrated with the AVR32 Studio development suite.

Atmel also releases the schematics and Gerber files to allow customers to incorporate elements of the kit into their own designs.

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