Here we’ll provide some examples of AVR programming. AVR is a great way to program Atmel microcontrollers.  For background, microcontrollers are small computers usually in a single microchip.  They can be programmed in C, Java, and many other languages.  The Mindstorm NXT is itself a microcontroller you program each time you upload a new program.

• Our favorite AVR programming environment is free, AVR Studio.  The latest 5.0 version looks great.
• For some great background on AVR, we recommend looking at this AVR tutorial by Adafruit.