Does Arduino have a Dead Man switch?

A dead man's switch is a device used as a fail-safe. These switches are usually used as a form of fail-safe where they stop a machine with no operator from a potentially dangerous action or incapacitate a device as a result of accident, malfunction, or misuse.

I'm looking for some method to stop an Arduino to prevent harm. Is there an Arduino code sequence that will stop an Arduino and the only way to recover is to restart the device?

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0 Gough Lui over 2 years ago

You could always drop into an infinite loop to stop an Arduino in its tracks.

More often, watchdog timers are used to reboot an Arduino in case the sketch stops running for a certain length of time.

But perhaps the safest and easiest depending on the application is to have a mechanical "dead-man's" that cuts power to the board entirely, e.g. a series power switch.

- Gough
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0 ntewinkel over 2 years ago in reply to Gough Lui

I wonder if there’s a watchdog type power switch module? Ie, a module that shuts off after 1 second unless the timer is reset via a digital pin. Then in the Arduino code loop it has to pulse a digital pin or else the power gets cut.
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0 ntewinkel over 2 years ago in reply to Gough Lui

I wonder if there’s a watchdog type power switch module? Ie, a module that shuts off after 1 second unless the timer is reset via a digital pin. Then in the Arduino code loop it has to pulse a digital pin or else the power gets cut.
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0 Gough Lui over 2 years ago in reply to ntewinkel

I suppose you could combine WDT with reset cause to achieve this.

Lets say your program begins by determining reset cause first - if it was WDT, then hang the program in a loop feeding the WDT. If the cause was anything else (e.g. cold boot, brownout), then continue execution.

- Gough
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