Date: 17/03/2009

Reference design for designing digital audio gateways like Apple's iPod docking stations

Atmel's new AVR32 based ATEVK1105 Digital Audio Gateway reference design kit features digital audio streaming, decoding and playback. Targeted at designing peripherals that connects home and automotive Hi-Fi audio systems like popular iPod docking stations, this kit is based on the AT32UC3A 32-bit Flash microcontrollers. It provides hardware/software platform, interfaces and evaluation features.

The AVR32 CPU with DSP instructions handles audio decoding tasks, and the UC3A handles two audio interfaces. For high quality stereo output, AVR32 has a stereo 16-bit bitstream audio DAC with internal FIR and Comb filters. For 4-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 to reduce 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 has a feature to scan the ID3 tag and present album artist and song information on the 2" QVGA onboard display.
Customers with a license from Apple are able to interface the kit to a iPod or iPhone using an authorized Apple authentication chip adapter.

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

This kit is available at a resale price of US$179 from Atmel's distributors.