Arduino Timers

Reference: Russell Chapter 7

CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12

Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 Timers in Arduino

• Arduino’s wiring library has many useful time related built in

functions: delay(), millis() and micros() and delayMicroseconds().

• The PWM analogWrite(), the tone() and the noTone() function

also uses time related function.

• Even the Servo library uses timers.

CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12
Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 Wiring delay() function

• Pauses the program for the

amount of time (in
miliseconds) specified as
parameter.

• There are 1000 milliseconds

in a second.

• Syntax: delay(ms)
• Where ms is the number of
milliseconds to pause
(unsigned long).

CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12

Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 Wiring analogWrite() function

• Function analogWrite() writes an analog value (PWM wave) to a pin.

• Can be used to light a LED at varying brightnesses or drive a motor at
various speeds.
CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12
Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 Wiring analogWrite() function

• After a call to analogWrite(), the pin will generate a steady square

wave of the specified duty cycle until the next call to analogWrite().

• The frequency of the PWM signal is approximately 490 Hz.

• On the Arduino UNO, this function works on pins 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and
11.
• You do not need to call pinMode() to set the pin as an output
before calling analogWrite().

• The analogWrite function has nothing whatsoever to do with the

analog pins or the analogRead function.

CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12

Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 What is a timer?

• A timer is a piece of hardware built-in the

Arduino controller.

• It is like a clock, and can be used to measure

time events.

• The timer can be programmed by some special

registers.

• You can configure the pre-scalar for the timer,

the mode of operation and many other things.

• The controller of the Arduino is the Atmel AVR

ATmega328.

CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12

Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 What is a timer?

• ATmega328 has 3 timers, called timer0,

timer1 and timer2.

• Timer0 and timer2 are 8bit timers, while timer1

is a 16bit timer.

• More bits means higher timing resolution.

• Remember, 8bits has 256 different states while
16bit has 65536.

• All timers depends on the system clock of your

Arduino system, which is 16MHz for the
Arduino UNO.

CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12

Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 Timer0

• Timer0 is a 8bit timer.

• In the Wiring libraries, timer0 is used for
the commonly used timer functions.

• You know... delay(), millis() and micros().

• Warning: If you change the timer0
registers, this may influence the Arduino
timings function.

• Changes are not permanent: If accidentally

mess up a timer register, just upload a new
program.
CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12
Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 Timer1

• Timer1 is a 16bit timer.

• In the Wiring libraries, this timer is used for the servo library.

CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12

Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 Timer2

• Timer2 is a 8bit timer.

• In the Wiring libraries, this timer is
used for the tone() function.

CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12

Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 Frequency review (from wikipedia)

• Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per

unit time.

• The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so

the period is the reciprocal of the frequency.

• f = 1 /T
• For example, if a newborn baby's heart beats at a frequency of
120 times a minute, its period (the interval between beats) is half
a second.

• Click for a neat frequency animation.

CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12

Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 Prescaler or count-divider

A prescaler is an electronic counting circuit used to reduce a

high frequency electrical signal to a lower frequency by integer
division.

CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12

Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 How to define your own timer
• In the ATmega328 there are 6 important timer registers, that can be
interfaced with to adjust the Timer behavior.

• TCCRx - Timer/Counter Control Register. Prescaler is configured here.

• TCNTx - Timer/Counter Register. The actual timer value is stored here.
• OCRx - Output Compare Register
• ICRx - Input Capture Register (only for 16 bit timer)
• TIMSKx - Timer/Counter Interrupt Mask Register. To enable/disable
timer interrupts.

• TIFRx - Timer/Counter Interrupt Flag Register. Indicates a pending timer

interrupt.
CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12
Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 Clock select and timer frequency
• Different clock sources can be independently selected for each timer.
• To calculate the timer frequency (e.g. 2Hz using timer1) you need:
‣ CPU frequency: 16 MHz for Arduino UNO.
‣ Maximum timer counter value: 256 for 8bit timer, 65536 for 16bit.
‣ A prescaler value: either 256 or 1024.
‣ Divide CPU frequency with a prescaler (16000000 / 256 = 62500).
‣ Divide result through the desired frequency (62500 / 2Hz = 31250).
‣ Verify the result against the maximum timer counter value (31250 <
65536 success). If fail, choose bigger prescaler.
CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12
Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 Calculating the prescaler

This can be done on the website: http://www.et06.dk/atmega_timers/

As calculated on
previous slide.

CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12

Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering
 Blinking LED with compare match
interrupt
#define ledPin 13
• Timer1 is in CTC mode
void setup(){
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); (clear timer on compare
// initialize timer1 match).
noInterrupts(); // disable all interrupts

• The timer is configured for a

TCCR1A = 0;
TCCR1B = 0;
TCNT1 = 0;

//compare match register 16MHz/256/2Hz

frequency of 2Hz.
OCR1A = 31250;
TCCR1B |= (1 << WGM12); // CTC mode
TCCR1B |= (1 << CS12); // 256 prescaler
TIMSK1 |= (1 << OCIE1A); // enable timer compare interrupt
interrupts(); // enable all interrupts
}

//timer compare interrupt service routine

// toggle LED pin
ISR(TIMER1_COMPA_vect){
digitalWrite(ledPin, digitalRead(ledPin) ^ 1);
}

void loop()
{
// your program here...
}

CPE 355 - Real Time Embedded Kernels - Spring ‘12

Nuno Alves ([email protected]), College of Engineering