So, the project is still in it’s infancy, but I just wanted to let you all know that I got an SoftwareSerial, the Stepper library (with an L293DNE) and FastLed all working on a single ATTiny85 thanks to all of the great libraries our there.
My short term goal is the build a small two chip motor and led light controller with an attiny and an l293 (dual h-bridge). It’s part of a larger project that I’ve been noodling on for year.
The first few instructables posted online aren’t very good so I’ll submit what I did in case it helps someone else following along (or me later on).
Here’s the tricks.
SoftwareSerial
First of all SoftwareSerial seems to work great. Choose any two pins on your attiny (one is rx and the other is tx). Connect that to two pins on your arduino (other than 0 and 1 the default serial pins). Remember that rx on your arduino go to tx on your attiny and vice versus.
L293 & Steppers
Next, follow Tom’s two pins instructions for connecting an arduino to the L293/stepper motor http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/StepperBipolarCircuit (I used pins 7 (Arduino D2) and 5 (Arduino D0)). This uses two transistors and four resisters. I don’t totally understand it, but it saves two pins (sweet) and lets me use the build-in Stepper functions.
Next I put FastSPI on pin 1 and it worked like a champ.
Next I plan on making a little board in Eagle to hold the components. Wish me luck