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Button Debouncing

Button debouncing is important to address when using buttons as inputs to a microcontroller. Without debouncing, a single button press could register as multiple presses and cause unintended behaviors. This document discusses debouncing a button with both hardware (using a capacitor) and software methods. It presents an example circuit with two LEDs toggling on a button press to demonstrate the double-toggling that occurs without debouncing. The document then explains how the example circuit is set up and the simple program used to toggle the LEDs on a button press.

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Andrei Linca-Torje
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134 views

Button Debouncing

Button debouncing is important to address when using buttons as inputs to a microcontroller. Without debouncing, a single button press could register as multiple presses and cause unintended behaviors. This document discusses debouncing a button with both hardware (using a capacitor) and software methods. It presents an example circuit with two LEDs toggling on a button press to demonstrate the double-toggling that occurs without debouncing. The document then explains how the example circuit is set up and the simple program used to toggle the LEDs on a button press.

Uploaded by

Andrei Linca-Torje
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Let's study button debouncing in a little more detail.

The importance of button debouncing should not be


overlooked. Button switches are one of the many ways that humans can provide input to the microcontroller.
When a button is pressed, the human will expect a reaction in some form, say an LED toggling, a menu on an
LCD (moving from one menu item to another), a motion controlled device (moving and stopping), etc. If a
button is not debounced in some way, the human may get quite frustrated.
Button debouncing can cause multiple false button presses. Imagine using a button in the selection of a menu
item. The button not being debounced, one click can cause the menu to skip one or more menu items. Even
worse, when trying to select a particular item, and it continually skips when either button is toggled, making a
particular selection to be made.
To demonstrate this phenomenon, this project will contain two LEDs. When a button is pressed, the LEDs will
toggle between each other. A button press will turn one off, and the other on. When the button is released, it
can start this process again and cause the LEDs to toggle again, once the button is pressed. You will notice
that the LEDs will toggle twice, or even more times with only one button press.
I will show two ways to eliminate debouncing. The in-circuit method (hardware) using a capacitor, and software
debouncing. The hardware will simply use a capacitor to eliminate debouncing, and the software will introduce
a variable that measures the confidence level of the button stream of ones, or zeros. Disclaimer: the method
that I use for hardware debouncing is a very simple and poor mans method. The main problem with this
method is that the voltage climbs from 0 to 5v rather than an immediate, or instantaneous change. This can put
the signal in a range that the microcontroller does not know how to deal with the voltage. This range is the area
between the thresholds of high and low signals, which is between 2 and 3 volts. With this said, I have not
personally seen any problem with this with my button debouncing. If you would like to eliminate this climbing,
use a schmitt trigger.
In the video, the circuit is connected together on the breadboard without the hardware debouncing, so the
problem can be experienced. Two LEDs are connected to the microcontroller, both on port B, one on pin 0 and
the other on pin 2. both of these pins will be set to output and since the LEDs are green, a 330 ohm resistor is
used for each LED. The button switch is connected to pin 1, on port B. This pin will be set for input and set to
read high (pin set to a "1"). for the first "bounce" test, we will not use a capacitor across the two leads of the
button.
The program to make two LEDs toggle when the push button is pressed is very simple. First, the pins are
initialized: Pins outputting to the LEDs are set to output in the DDR (Data Direction Register). One of the LEDs
are toggled high, so at the start, one is on and one is off. Then, the never ending loop is started and the code
within that block gets executed until the microcontroller loses power. Withing this loop, the pin that is connected
to the push button is constantly checked to determine if it is on. If it is pressed, and exhibits a 1, then it checks
if the button was firsts released. This is important, because if we don't have this check, the button will just

toggle continuously while the button is pressed. We only want the button to toggle if the button is pressed and
then released.

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