PIC18f2423 is strucking

Question

Dear All,

I'm doing Offline Datalogger using PIC18f2423. At an subsequent interval, microcontroller reads Date and time from DS1307RTC and Energy meter data via 485IC (Modbus Protocol). Store these results in EEPROM(24512). Whenever I require, I interface my kit with PC, and collects the stored data. All are working good and I can retrieve correct data also. But rarely and randomly while reading RTC and Energy data, somewhere my microcontroller strucks and after some time (may few minutes), it will continue it's work again. If any body has any idea about this, please help.

This is my first post. If anything wrong in this, or any information I missed to write, or if I post this in wrong place, kindly bear.

Thanks.

MicrochipRTCfr · Answer

Hi,

How are you developing ?

Which development tool do you use (Pickit3, ICD3,...) ?

Which compiler do you use : C18, XC8 ?

If it is stuck for some time, it probably means the CPU is waiting for some event to happen (I2C ? SPI?) or some counter to reach a certain value.

If you use debugger, you can put breakpoints.

What you can also do if you suspect that it remains stuck somewhere you can add timeouts to each while loop reading sensor or doing some action.

This is widly used to make robust SW to avoid it get stuck for ever

Example:

[code]

while ( !ready && !timeout)

counter++;

if (counter > max)

timeout = 1;

if (timeout == 1)

{

// if we enter here there an been an error. Send error message

}

[/code]

In this pseudo code ready is a flag which is set to 1 when data is read from external sensor. It should go to 1 before counter > max

max is a timeout delay or value

Of course this is only a concept. you can implement above one with interrupts (timeout interrupt) to make SW more efficient.

Can you please explain how many interrupts you use ?

Can you show your SW interrupt ?

regards