MCU Type ATmega16U2 not avaliable in Eclipse AVR Plugin

Question

I am following this guide. Now I want to create the Create the "ArduinoCore library". But when I am creating a new project, I can not select ATmega16U2 as MCU type.

But my Arduino Due R3-E and UNO SMD R3 both use ATmega16U2.

What shall I do O_o???

• Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams: They may have it, but you don't actually use it.
• newandlost: What do you mean with this? Why do I not actually use it?
• Anonymous Penguin: Although you can't do it with the Eclipse AVR plugin, you can change the firmware of the 16U2.

Answer 1

The ATmega16U2 on those boards isn't intended to be programmable by the end-user. It's only there to help convert from USB to TTL serial, which lets your computer communicate with the board's main microcontroller. It replaces the FTDI chip which was used on some older boards.

In the case of the Uno, the main microcontroller is the ATmega328. For the Due, it's the AT91SAM3X8E. If you want to program them from the Arduino IDE, you can usually just select the board by name from the drop-down menu.

• newandlost: Thank you very much for your answer. Like I said, I want to program arduino using eclipse. So when I am prompted to tell the MCU type and MCU frequency, it's about the main MCU and not the USB to TTL serial?
• Peter Bloomfield: Yes, that's correct. It needs to know about the main MCU because different chips have different features, and that affects how it compiles some of the underlying Arduino code.