Silly simple Arduino hardware interrupts

[Dave_D]

Arduino  hardware (as opposed to timer) interrupts are incredibly easy to use... here's a very basic sketch to turn the LED on and off depending on the input to a particular digital input pin

The arduino Nano only has 2 interrupts , on digital pins 2 and 3 (other arduinos have more) but you can get the jist of  how useful they can be.

The two functions lightOn and lightOff can be triggered regardless of what is happening in the loop() function. as you can see, the digital inputs do not need to be constantly polled to check for input.

int button_interrupt_zero = 0; // interrupt on nano digital pin 2
int button_interrupt_one = 1; // interrupt on nano digital pin 3

const int ledPin =  13; // this is used purely as an input/activity indicator for buttons 1 - 3

void setup() 
{
  // initialize digital pin 13 as an input indicator.
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);

  // attachInterrupt( *which interrupt* , *function to run*, *mode*)
  // mode can be RISING,FALLING,HIGH,LOW or CHANGE
  attachInterrupt(button_interrupt_zero ,lightOn, RISING);
  attachInterrupt(button_interrupt_one ,lightOff, RISING);
}

void loop() 
{
  
}

void lightOn()
{
  digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
}

void lightOff()
{
  digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
}
 

hope this is useful

 

[Macavity]

Good stuff! I am engaged in a few (unfinished) Arduino projects which would
probably benefit from using interrupts, rather than convoluted branching!

[hughgilhespie]

+1 for Good Stuff.

At the risk of making it slightly less simple, you can actually use pretty much all the Arduino pins for interrupts, not just pins 2 and 3. These other interrupts, called Pin Change Interrupts, are slightly different in that they are triggered by each change of state on the pin, i.e. high TO low AND low TO high. Unlike the interrupts on pins 2 and 3, you can't specify rising edge, falling edge etc. Also, although pretty much all the pins will generate an interrupt, there are only a limited number of interrupt vectors, one vector for each port, so you may need extra code to work out which particular pin within a port caused the interrupt.

For sure, start with the 'easy' interrupts on pins 2 and 3 but if you do need more it is well worth the effort in learning how to use pin change interrupts. A very good introduction is http://gammon.com.au/interrupts

Or - use a Teensy 3.1 or 3.2 with an ARM M4 processor. Then all the pins have 'proper' interupts and you can use the Arduino 'attachInterrupt' method for any pin.

Regards, Hugh

[Gina]

I've only used pin 2 for interrupts but certainly found them very useful and, yes, very easy to implement