Arduino Timer Interrupts

Arduino Timer Interrupts

When you want things to happen at a regular time interval, it can be easy to go for the delay() function. But this just pauses the program for a specific time period which is wasteful especially if you need to do other processing in the meantime.

This is where timers and interrupts come in to play.

The Arduino UNO has three timers

• Timer0 - An 8 bit timer used by Arduino functions delay(), millis() and micros().
• Timer1 - A 16 bit timer used by the Servo() library
• Timer2 - An 8 bit timer used by the Tone() library

The Mega boards have Timers 3,4,5 which may be used instead

In the example that follows, we shall use Timer1 for our interrupt. Obviously, if you are using the Servo Library there will be a conflict, so you should choose another timer.

Here is the basics of an interrupt driven program. It is the basic LED flash program, but now instead of using delays it uses an interrupt every half second to turn the LED on and then off, thus making the LED flash once per second.

/* 
Example Timer1 Interrupt
Flash LED every second
*/

#define ledPin 13
int timer1_counter;
void setup()
{
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);

  // initialize timer1 
  noInterrupts();           // disable all interrupts
  TCCR1A = 0;
  TCCR1B = 0;

  // Set timer1_counter to the correct value for our interrupt interval
  //timer1_counter = 64911;   // preload timer 65536-16MHz/256/100Hz
  //timer1_counter = 64286;   // preload timer 65536-16MHz/256/50Hz
  timer1_counter = 34286;   // preload timer 65536-16MHz/256/2Hz
  
  TCNT1 = timer1_counter;   // preload timer
  TCCR1B |= (1 << CS12);    // 256 prescaler 
  TIMSK1 |= (1 << TOIE1);   // enable timer overflow interrupt
  interrupts();             // enable all interrupts
}

ISR(TIMER1_OVF_vect)        // interrupt service routine 
{
  TCNT1 = timer1_counter;   // preload timer
  digitalWrite(ledPin, digitalRead(ledPin) ^ 1);
}

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