Faster detection on Port A0

[JLeith]

Hello All
I have a Halloween interface to make my Ghosts and Goblets move when a Ghost comes Trick or Treat.

I have a sensor across my walk way that triggers PortA0 to logic 1

The problem I have is I loop 500 times with a 600ms delay to get about 5min with no Trick or Treats to activate a Fog Machine and other Ghosts.

I can't always trigger my main action from Port A0 if I miss the action while waiting the 600ms delay

I have a simple drawing. And the Flowcode. All the Action is under Macro 'Relay"

I have added several PortA0 looks during the loop but I think my flaw is in the 600ms delay.

Does anyone know how I can get around this. And have the Main action happen.
I tried the Wait for PortA but I couldn't trigger the Loop relay 4 to run.

The program runs about 4 ot of 5 times. I would like to see if I can get it to do 5 out 5.

John

[medelec35]

Hi John,
You can make this work really well if you use interrupts.
Are you able to use port B0 (Int) as a input for the triggering?
If so as soon as INT (port B0 interrupt) is triggered i.e a change from high to low or low to high depending on preference then it can set a flag to 1 which also you can get it to reset the timer for use whenever you want.
Also I would use a timer interrupt for timing instead of a delay within a loop.
Then the delay can be set from a milliseconds to loads of hours
All this should be nice an easy to implement.

[JLeith]

Hello Martin

Really nice to hear from you on my newest project

Yes I can use B0 it is open
I was looking at the Interrupt just not sure where to place it in the flow.

? Not sure how the timer interrupt for timing works. Yes the long loop is hard to manage.

I will give it a go and see how I make out.

Is this a picture of design. At lease I thing this is the design ?

[JLeith]

Hi again Martin

Looking at the Timer Interrupt and the Port B0

Would I not be in the same pickle with the timer ? . If I say set the timer to run for 5 min then how do I trigger a "Ghost" say arrives in 3 min after the Timer Interrupt is timing 1....5 Min ?

I will wait for you help on this before I dive in a redesign. I will look into the PorrtB0 trigger.

John

[JLeith]

Hi Martin
I got the PortB0 to trigger and it works every time.

The issue I see know is Flowcode works every time but the hardware locks up after the Relay2 macro runs

Getting Load errors but I can't seam to find the faults.

Can you help locating the offending. It looks like a call to the LCD ?
I think I have the LCD settings working to clear the LCD to list the current steps.

John

Attached the new flowcode build


Building CASM file
Serious Warning: Possible sw stack corruption, function 'FCI_DELAYINT_MS' called by more than one asynchronous thread (main/Task, interrupt, interrupt low)
Serious Warning: Possible sw stack corruption, function 'FCD_04071_LCD__Clear' called by more than one asynchronous thread (main/Task, interrupt, interrupt low)
Serious Warning: Possible sw stack corruption, function 'FCD_04071_LCD__Cursor' called by more than one asynchronous thread (main/Task, interrupt, interrupt low)
Serious Warning: Possible sw stack corruption, function 'FCD_04071_LCD__PrintString' called by more than one asynchronous thread (main/Task, interrupt, interrupt low)
Serious Warning: Possible sw stack corruption, function 'FCD_04071_LCD__ClearLine' called by more than one asynchronous thread (main/Task, interrupt, interrupt low)
Serious Warning: Possible sw stack corruption, function 'delay_ms' called by more than one asynchronous thread (main/Task, interrupt, interrupt low)
Serious Warning: Possible sw stack corruption, function 'delay_s' called by more than one asynchronous thread (main/Task, interrupt, interrupt low)

[medelec35]

Really nice to hear from you on my newest project

Thanks John, Happy to help

Would I not be in the same pickle with the timer ?

I don't believe it would be the same pickle at all!
Both interrupts are placed at the start so are only ever enabled once.
Add a timer2 interrupt and set the properties for the very lowest whole frequency = 125Hz
to do that set both pre and post scaler to 16 and Rollover to 250.
Select Create a new macro and call it something like Timer2ISR
How the interrupt works is precisely every second the interrupt call macro called Timer2ISR would have been accessed 125 times.
In other words once every 1/125 = 8 ms.
So if you have a byte TimerTick and a Int Seconds variable then you can have

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If TimerTick <125:

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Yes: TimerTick = TimerTick + 1: 

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No: TimerTick = 0: If Seconds < 300:

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Yes: Seconds = Seconds + 1: 

Now add another interrupt - interrupt on INT0 Pin
Select Create New Macro and name it something like

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INT0ISR

Within the INT0ISR macro add the following Byte variable within a calculation block :

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GhostDetected = 1

&

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Seconds = 0

Now whenever the INT0 pin (port B0) goes from low to high, the GhostDetected variable will be set to 1 and the timer will be reset to 0 seconds if that's what you want.
Then within main you can have two decision branches.

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If Seconds = 300 then: Seconds = 0: Do what ever is required when 5 minutes has elapsed e.g call macro

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If GhostDetected = 1 then: GhostDetected = 0: Do what ever is required when ghost has been detected e.g call macro

Give that a go then post flowchart, I will then check it out for you.

[medelec35]

Hi John,
Not seen your latest post prior to my latest post.
If you follow my suggestion on where and what to place within the interrupts then you won't have any corruption issues causing lock-ups.
To prevent corruption, keep interrupts as short as possible,
Don't place any delays or components that are used anywhere else within flowchart.
As you can see within INT0 interrupt macro there is only one calculation box with

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GhostDetected = 1

Keep it short = no issues.

[JLeith]

Hi Martin

Crash & Burn

Note: Seconds is used in the timer_int Macro. I used the term sec but not much luck

I added the Interrupt
1. Timer 2

And Added the Macro
Timer2ISR

And added the 2 decisions

Now the Flowcode just runs then stops

[medelec35]

Hi John,
Made some corrections for you.
See how you get on with flowchart now.
You need to make sure your other call macros are correct.

[JLeith]

Hi Martin

Endless Loop once B0 is detected in Flowcode. And nothing happens in the Chip

i have loaded into Chip... BO doesn't trigger when activated

The Seconds timer works in chip. Watching to see what the chip does at 300
Nothing happened when the Chip went to 300 just went back to zero

I added the LCD messages so I could follow the code.

version to is Timer3A

The Compiler Errors are gone.

Martin do you know why when I load to chip I get a long line of ...............................................
Then the file saves. It works just curious.

[medelec35]

Lets concentrate on the triggering side first.
You have the the triggering circuit connected to port b0?
What is the voltage when not triggered and when triggered?
What do you want to happen as soon as trigger detected?

[JLeith]

Good News Martin

With your help with the timer made it possible

I added in the PortB0 Interrupt

Add resets to the sec timing after No Ghost and also when Ghost detected.

I adjusted the timers for testing. I'm not sure if I can post the Sec on the LCD it updates to fast. Not sure if I can post LCD during the 1 sec timer.

Version Timer AAA is working in the Chip not so much in Flowcode the LCD update doesn't follow the Chip Action.

I just need to clean up the "No Ghost" relay action in "Relay" and "Relay2" Just to clean the Code.

Do you see anything I have errors on ?

John

[medelec35]

As the seconds continuously count up (or you could have it to count down) in the background, you can have the seconds displayed live.
Just within the main loop place a LCD print number macro for the seconds.
best to place a 100ms delay also within the main loop so LCD is not being updated too fast.

[JLeith]

Morning Martin

I was able to get the B0 to trigger every time.

The Green or is it Blue of no return happen. I placed a Count down as you indicted and I was not getting the numbers correctly.
Example - 4 - 3 - 1 - 3 - 2 - 1
Could not see why I could not see a clean 4 -3 - 2 -1....Relay

What I don't follow is after a Non Ghost the relays activate but the 5 min loop doesn't loop back to timing. I think also the Ghost Detected doesn't always loop back

I know how how a program completed will fall back to the called Macro just can't follow how the Timer gets called back to restart.

I made it easier to code by Ghost = Trick & Treat Kids

Events: On startup ----5 min timer--------At (0) --- Activate Macro Relays with Ghost =4----Then return to count down from 5 min
The PortB0 trigger ------------------------------------- At any time a Ghost is Detected the Macro Relay 2 triggers ----This should reset the 5 Min timer Also

I added the Flowcode with the count down.

[medelec35]

I have made a fair few changes.
You definitely don't require 2 timer interrupts.
I only had timer2 in mind as the timing is much more accurate than timer0
Should work on hardware better than simulation.
At all times you should see on the display exactly how many seconds are left including the 10 & 20 second delays.
I never use a delay component that is for 10 seconds or greater as the hardware has to effectively pause.
During that time, display can't be updated.

[JLeith]

Works like a charm

I see you did a cleanup of the Time_tmr and the Variables.

In my Main at the start is there a cleaner way to reset the PortC and Port A. I have relay banks on the outputs and they need to be at Logic 1 state.

They use Logic 0 to active. Opto Couplers

I was trying the Masking but not getting the action I was hoping.

I see you also put the count down on the 10sec time for the Relays and the 20sec when a Ghost is detected.

Great work.

John

[medelec35]

Glad it works like a charm.

In my Main at the start is there a cleaner way to reset the PortC and Port A

Yes just output 255 to the

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Entire port

rather than 1 to a

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Single Bit

.
Just select each bit that has to be at 5V.
Make sure any other bits that you don't want to be at 5V are not selected.

I see you also put the count down on the 10sec time for the Relays and the 20sec when a Ghost is detected.

Great work.

Thanks John,
I thought you may like that touch.

Are you now more familiar how interrupts work?

[JLeith]

Hi Martin

Yes on the interrupts are clear.

I will look at clean up of the individual port settings

The 10sec is for Non Ghosts so the Monsters are not on to long. The 20sec is when a Ghost is Detected so the Fog Machine have time to cool down.

Thank you so much with the Timer help.

John