Bit set, reset, toggle and masking in Microcontrollers

Well I would like your concepts on bit set and reset operations to be clear. No matter which language you use be it assembly or embedded c, you will always require to set and reset register bits.

Now whether you want to initialize some peripheral or poll something you will require these three operations.

Bit set operation

This means making a particular bit in an register as 1 or setting it. Now let us see this property of logical OR.

x OR 1 = 1

So whatever be the value of x if you OR it with 1 the result will be 1. This is what we want right? I’ll be taking one example after explaining bit reset.

Bit reset operation

This means that you want to make a particular bit of a register 0 or reset it. We make use of the property of logical AND:

x AND 0 = 0

So whatever be the value of x if you AND it with 0 the result is 0. This is what we wanted so bit reset is done by logical AND operation.

Masking

Often you are interested only in a particular bits of a register. This may be the input of some sensor or something else. Now you want to use masking in this scenario. So masking means you reset all the bits that are not required and let the bits under consideration as it is. Again we make use of logical AND properties.

x AND 0 = 0

x AND 1 = x

So you make the masking pattern by making the bits you want as 1 and the ones you don’t want  as 0. Convert this value to hex and logical AND that mask value with the register.

Bit toggle

Bit toggle is also useful. So for this we make use of the property of ex-or as follows.

x ex-or 1 = complement of x or x-bar

Thus if you ex-or the bit with 1 the bit will be toggled.

Example

R &= 0x2081 // This is the masking operation in embedded c

R |= 0x2081 // This will set the bits 0,7,13

R ^= 0x2081 // This will toggle bits 0,7,13

So as you can see this example covers masking. Similarly you need to make the bit patterns for bit set, reset and toggle operation.

If you want more examples comment here. Please like the posts if you like what I have written. And do subscribe to get notifications of my new posts.

Capacitive Accelerometer Interfacing

Well in this post I’ll be telling briefly what is an accelerometer and how to interface it with a microcontroller. To be honest I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I decided to write this post which I was planning on writing for some time now.

Accelerometer

It is basically a device which is used for measuring acceleration or change in motion. You use one more often than you know. There is an inbuilt accelerometer in your cellular mobile phones and tablets. So now you know what is used for detecting the tilts in your phone. Next time you play temple run or similar game you would know that all this fun is possible due to a technology called accelerometer and other stuff. Then modern laptop hard disks have accelerometers to detect fall. If fall is detected the writing head in retraced so that the disk is not damages and there are no scratches. There are numerous other applications and examples. I just gave food for thought you can explore the rest on your own.

Types of Accelerometer

Well as you may have already guessed there are various types of accelerometers.

• Capacitive Accelerometer
• Magneto-resistive Accelerometer
• Piezo-electric Accelerometer

There are various other types these three being examples.This is a video one of my instructors showed me. The guy explains the working and construction quite well.

This is an article having good information about accelerometers

http://www.engineersgarage.com/articles/accelerometer?page=1

Data from accelerometers

Now that you know how accelerometers work. Let’s come to the topic at hand i.e. using one with your microcontroller.

Well there are different types of accelerometers depending on the type and method of obtaining data. While the data acquisition may be different but processing part is same once you get the reading. So the data may be available as an analog signal or may be it may be available inside the accelerometer in a register which you need to access via a protocol like SPI etc..

ADXL 335

So I’ll be talking about this accelerometer. You can look at the datasheet before deciding to use it.

So this accelerometer gives the output as three analog signals. There are three pins x,y,z for the three axes. Then there is Vcc and GND.

For actually using this signals you need to convert them into digital form. For this you use the inbuilt 12bit ADC that is available in msp430g2553.(If your controller does not have an inbuilt ADC, which won’t be the case, you can use an external ADC or if your application requires faster conversion and better precision and stability then you can use external ADC.) So once you have the data in digital form, next step would be calibration of the accelerometer.

Calibration

Now you have the data in digital form but what to do with it and how to see it? The answer is you send the digital reading serially and observe it on a serial monitor. So you make variables and store the digital reading in those and view the numbers on screen. Now you will make a table for these variables and decide the limits. Suppose you want to detect forward tilt, you can note what are the range of values that the accelerometer gives for the gesture and the using a simple if statement write whatever you want your application to do on a forward tilt.

Position	Digital Range of X	Digital Range of Y
Forward	N.A	<658
Backward	N.A	>705
Left	>497	N.A
Right	<460	N.A
Stop	470 to 485	695 to 705

 

The above code is an example of finding the ranges. You can then use basic if else for this. If you want a video showing the calibration process do tell me.

Code for gesture controlled bot

void setup()
{
  pinMode(P2_0,OUTPUT);
  pinMode(P2_1,OUTPUT);
  pinMode(P2_2,OUTPUT);
  pinMode(P2_3,OUTPUT);
  pinMode(A0,INPUT);//X
  pinMode(A3,INPUT);//Y
  pinMode(P1_4,INPUT);
  //pinMode(A2,INPUT);//Z
  Serial.begin(9600);
  Serial.println("Start");
}
void loop()
{
  int x = analogRead(A0);
  int y = analogRead(A3);
  int m = digitalRead(P1_4);
  //Serial.print(x);
  //Serial.print(','); //use these lines for calliberation
  //Serial.println(y);
   if(y>520)
  {
  digitalWrite(P2_0,HIGH);
  digitalWrite(P2_1,LOW);
  digitalWrite(P2_2,HIGH);
  digitalWrite(P2_3,LOW);
  Serial.println("BACKWARD");
  //delay(100);
  }
  if(y<460)
  {
  digitalWrite(P2_0,LOW);
  digitalWrite(P2_1,HIGH);
  digitalWrite(P2_2,LOW);
  digitalWrite(P2_3,HIGH);
  Serial.println("FORWARD");
  //delay(100);
  }
  if(x>445)
  {
  digitalWrite(P2_0,LOW);
  digitalWrite(P2_1,LOW);
  digitalWrite(P2_2,LOW);
  digitalWrite(P2_3,HIGH);
  Serial.println("LEFT");
  //delay(100);
  }
  if(x<430)
  {
  digitalWrite(P2_0,LOW);
  digitalWrite(P2_1,HIGH);
  digitalWrite(P2_2,LOW);
  digitalWrite(P2_3,LOW);
  Serial.println("RIGHT");
 // delay(100);
  }
  if(x>430 && x< 445 && y>460 && y<500)
  {
  digitalWrite(P2_0,LOW);
  digitalWrite(P2_1,LOW);
  digitalWrite(P2_2,LOW);
  digitalWrite(P2_3,LOW);
  Serial.println("STOP");
  //delay(100);
  }  
}

(If you would like the embedded c code email me.)

P.S.

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