Pull-up Resistors

Introduction


Pull-up resistors are very common when using microcontrollers (MCUs) or any digital
logic device. This tutorial will explain when and where to use pull-up resistors, then we
will do a simple calculation to show why pull-ups are important.
Suggested Reading
Concepts that you should be familiar with before proceeding:
What is a circuit?
Resistors
Voltage, Current, Resistance
Digital Logic
Input/Output
What is a Pull-up Resistor
Lets say you have an MCU with one pin configured as an input. If there is nothing
connected to the pin and your program reads the state of the pin, will it be high (pulled
to VCC) or low (pulled to ground)? It is difficult to tell. This phenomena is referred to
as floating. To prevent this unknown state, a pull-up or pull-down resistor will insure
that the pin is in either a high or low state, while also using a low amount of current.
For simplicity, we will focus on pull-ups since they are more common than pull-downs.
They operate using the same concepts, except the pull-up resistor is connected to the
high voltage (this is usually 3.3V or 5V and is often refereed to as VCC) and the pull-
down resistor is connected to ground.
Pull-ups are often used with buttons and switches.

With a pull-up resistor, the input pin will read a high state when the button is not
pressed. In other words, a small amount of current is flowing between VCC and the
input pin (not to ground), thus the input pin reads close to VCC. When the button is
pressed, it connects the input pin directly to ground. The current flows through the
resistor to ground, thus the input pin reads a low state. Keep in mind, if the resistor
wasnt there, your button would connect VCC to ground, which is very bad and is also
known as a short.
So what value resistor should you choose?
The short and easy answer is that you want a resistor value on the order of 10k for
the pull-up.
A low resistor value is called a strong pull-up (more current flows), a high
resistor value is called a weak pull-up (less current flows).

The value of the pull-up resistor needs to be chosen to satisfy two conditions:
1. When the button is pressed, the input pin is pulled low. The value of resistor R1
controls how much current you want to flow from VCC, through the button, and
then to ground.
2. When the button is not pressed, the input pin is pulled high. The value of the pull-
up resistor controls the voltage on the input pin.
For condition 1, you dont want the resistors value too low. The lower the resistance,
the more power will be used when the button is hit. You generally want a large resistor
value (10k), but you dont want it too large as to conflict with condition 2. A 4M
resistor might work as a pull-up, but its resistance is so large (or weak) that it may not
do its job 100% of the time.
The general rule for condition 2 is to use a pull-up resistor (R1) that is an order of
magnitude (1/10th) less than the input impedance (R2) of the input pin. An input pin on
a microcontroller has an impedance that can vary from 100k-1M. For this discussion,
impedance is just a fancy way of saying resistance and is represented by R2 in the
picture above. So, when the button is not pressed, a very small amount of current flows
from VCC through R1 and into the input pin. The pull-up resistor R1 and input pin
impedance R2 divides the voltage, and this voltage needs to be high enough for the
input pin to read a high state.
For example, if you use a 1M resistor for the pull-up R1 and the input pins
impedance R2 is on the order of 1M (forming a voltage divider), the voltage on the
input pin is going to be around half of VCC, and the microcontroller might not register
the pin being in a high state. On a 5V system, what does the MCU read on the input pin
if the voltage is 2.5V? Is it a high or a low? The MCU doesnt know and you might read
either a high or a low. A resistance of 10k to 100k for R1 should avoid most
problems.
Since pull-up resistors are so commonly needed, many MCUs, like the ATmega328
microcontroller on the Arduino platform, have internal pull-ups that can be enabled and
disabled. To enable internal pull-ups on an Arduino, you can use the following line of
code in your setup() function:
COPY CODE
pinMode(5, INPUT_PULLUP); // Enable internal pull-up resistor on pin 5
Another thing to point out is that the larger the resistance for the pull-up, the slower the
pin is to respond to voltage changes. This is because the system that feeds the input
pin is essentially a capacitor coupled with the pull-up resistor, thus forming a RC filter,
and RC filters take some time to charge and discharge. If you have a really fast
changing signal (like USB), a high value pull-up resistor can limit the speed at which
the pin can reliably change state. This is why you will often see 1k to 4.7K resistors
on USB signal lines.
All of these factors play into the decision on what value pull-up resistor to use.