Welcome to my first AVR tutorial on this site! We’ll be doing something basic today, namely controlling a servo. There are a lot of tutorials on how to control it with an Arduino, but less tutorials using only a bare AVR chip. In this tutorial we’ll be using the ATTiny44, a small and cheap microprocessor, which also contains a 16 bit timer, which will make our life a bit easier.
Servos are often used to move robot arms and things alike, because they can rotate a specific amount of degrees very precisely, depending on the pulsewidth you feed it with the microcontroller. They can also be used as a motor (you’ll need special ‘continuous rotation’ servos for that), you’ll often find them in RC cars.
So lets get started, and see how you actually control a servo!