Sina Roughani's TinyEncoder Turns an ATtiny1616 Into a 2.5MHz Quadrature Encoder Counter

Engineer Sina Roughani has released design files for a "glorified and hardened" breakout board for Microchip's ATtiny1616 microcontroller, based on the company's Application Note 2434 on Interfacing Quadrature Encoder using CCL with TCA and TCB.

"Microchip AN2434 explains how you can use an ATtiny to build a 2.5MHz quadrature encoder counter," Roughani writes. "This is a demo board for that. This is a glorified and hardened breakout board for the ATtiny1616 (QFN-20 3x3mm). The breadboard friendliness should make it attractive for cheap and simple signal reading from incremental encoders, but at the same time, it's a fully fledged Arduino."

"I structured the pins so you can even use resolvers with it! Resolvers are for super harsh environments and are priced accordingly. No need for an expensive chip though! You can do this board for $1. Its pins are protected for harsh transients with diodes and resistors."

The heart of the board is an ATtiny1616-MNR QFN-16, which is connected to 12 TVS diodes and 12 resistors plus an additional resistor for the UDPI programming interface. The only other parts required, bar the PCB itself, are the 2.54mm header pins for connecting it to a breadboard.

The design files and schematic for the board, dubbed TinyEncoder, are available on the Hackaday.io project page; the inspirational application note, meanwhile, can be downloaded from Microchip's website.