Fletchtronics

So you want to build USB enabled devices. Bumble-B is here to help!

It is a breakout board for Atmel's at90usb162 microcontroller, along with supporting hardware and USB connector. It is DIP-24/600mil shape, and works very well on a breadboard.

You can program Bumble-B without any special hardware and using entirely free and open source software from Atmel and the AVR community. This makes Bumble-B a self-contained AVR development kit that you can start working with instantly, with no special tools.

Bumble-B: breadboard mojo

You can use the default Bumble-B firmware, a program called userial to communicate over i2c, SPI, or do general purpose IO bit-banging without writing code.

When you use Bumble-B to build HID devices such as keyboards, joysticks, mice, or build CDC virtual serial devices, Bumble-B works without drivers on all modern computer platforms. The development environment is also supported in all modern operating systems including Linux, Windows, and Macintosh.

You can read a bit about the history of Bumble-B and the preloaded firmware in the Fletchtronics blog. Read more about how people are using Bumble-B here.

Bumble-B Related Links:

• Datasheet (updated 8/6/2009)
• Schematic
• LUFA (recommended) NOTE: As of LUFA release 090924, BumbleB is an officially supported board so the patched version is no longer supplied here. [USING LUFA README]
• Atmel examples
• Atmel Flip (Atmel's programmer)
• DFU-Programmer (OSS programmer)
• Atmel AVR Studio
• AVR-GCC
• userial virtual serial commands
• Bumble-B virtual serial port firmware (0.4 updated 10/27/2009) [source .tgz .zip] [binary] [README]
• Userial Tutorial
• Eagle Library Part for making breakouts
• Chat with us on irc.freenode.net / #bumbleb

Customer Quotes

btw, i did manage to plug it in. and it does work. damn fine craftsmanship too
ArmedGeek on IRC

dfletcher!
NullMoogleCable on IRC

<laen_> Also, my bumble-b has gone through the wash three times.
<dfletcher> :o
<dfletcher> does it work?!
<laen_> Yep!
<dfletcher> holy cow that's amazing
<dfletcher> I knew they were pretty rugged but dang
<laen_> I carry it in the coin pocket on my pants with a mouse-mover program on it. I always forget to check that pocket..
<dfletcher> hah I should do that
<dfletcher> man you're like walking advertising ;)
<dfletcher> hey it fits in that pocket perfect!
<laen_> Yeah!
This is an actual real IRC conversation! Laen is a PDX Dorkbot