RE: Micro Servo Tester #3 : Now With Pulse Generator! (Video now working)

beacon_dave — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 11:08:31 GMT

You may be able to use some of the AVR timer architecture to offload some of the timing work allowing you to use the display.

You can set up a timer compare match interrupt to directly toggle an output pin, so your 10 turn pot would load the value in the output compare register and the rest is taken care of in the background, potentially leaving you time to update the display.

Arduino uses some of the AVR timers for its own functions so you would need to be mindful of that.

More information here which may be of interest:

http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/AppNotes/Atmel-2505-Setup-and-Use-of-AVR-Timers_ApplicationNote_AVR130.pdf

Compare Match

In cases where it is not sufficient to monitor a timer overflow, the compare match interrupt can be used.

The Output Compare Register (OCRx) can be loaded with a value [0 .. MaxVal] which the TCNTn will be compared against in every timer cycle. When the timer reaches the compare value, the corresponding Output Compare Flag (OCFx) in the TIFRn register is set. The Timer can be configured to clear the count register to zero on a compare match.

Related output pins can be configured to be set, cleared, or toggled automatically on a compare match.

This feature is very useful to generate square wave signals of different frequencies. It offers a wide range of possibilities, which makes it possible to implement a DAC. The PWM mode is a special mode which is even better suited for wave generation. See the device datasheet for details.

RE: Micro Servo Tester #3 : Now With Pulse Generator! (Video now working)

ralphjy — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 19:05:48 GMT

Seems like video encoding is having problems again. You should try it again or put a link to YouTube. After a couple of tries encoding failed yesterday, I just linked to YouTube and it worked fine.

If you like ESP32s, that is another inexpensive option for dual core and you get WiFi.

RE: Micro Servo Tester #3 : Now With Pulse Generator! (Video now working)

dougw — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 14:40:19 GMT

It sounds like a good application for a dual core MCU like the Pi Pico or arduino Nano RP2040.