Addis Ababa University

Addis Ababa Institute of Technology

School of Electrical & Computer Engineering

ECEG- 4501 Microcomputers & Interfacing

Lab3: ARM Based MCU Programming: Interrupts

Introduction

As you may recall ARM defines two types of interrupt requests: FIQ (Fast Interrupt request) and
IRQ (Normal Interrupt request). There are 22 interrupt sources from the different peripherals in
LPC2148. A hardware called Vectored Interrupt Controller (VIC) serves as a bridge between these
interrupt sources and the ARM core.

External Interrupt
IRQ
Timers
VIC ARM Core
UARTs
.
. FIQ
.

You can configure each interrupt in LPC2148 as FIQ, vectored IRQ or non-vectored IRQ interrupts.
When an interrupt is vectored, a separate interrupt Service Routine (ISR) exists for that interrupt.
For FIQ and non-vectored IRQ interrupts, however, there is only one Interrupt Service Routine
(ISR) respectively (one for FIQ and one for non-vectored IRQ interrupts).

General steps when setting up interrupt in LPC2148:

Configure registers inside the VIC (Refer to VIC chapter of user manual of LPC2148)
o Configure interrupt as FIQ or IRQ
o Configure address of ISR that is executed when the interrupt occurs
o Enable the interrupt
Configure registers inside the peripheral that generates the interrupt (Refer to
corresponding peripheral on the user manual of LPC2148)

External Interrupt

There are four external interrupt sources on LPC2148: EINT0 - EINT3. These interrupts can be
configured to be edge-triggered or level-triggered. In this lab we will see how to use one of the
external interrupts, EINT1.

EINT1 is connected to pin P0.14 on the microcontroller. This pin is connected to a button on the
LPC2148 Education board. You will write a program that counts the number of button presses
and displays the count value on an LCD. You will use EINT1 to detect button presses.

We can configure external interrupt as follows:

1
 1. Configure registers inside the VIC

This configuration is made easier by functions inside interrupts.c file. To use these functions
#include interrupts.h into your main source file. Use the following functions for configuration.

VIC_init (): Initializes VIC. Clears and Disables all interrupts

install_IRQ (unsigned int channel , void (*ISR)(void), unsigned int IntNumber): Configures
an interrupt as IRQ

channel: Specifies interrupt source. You can find the channel number for each interrupt source on
page 73 of the user manual. For EINT1 the channel number is 15 or VIC_EINT1.

*ISR: Specifies the name of the function that is used as an ISR when the specified interrupt source
generates an interrupt. When the specified interrupt occurs, the code inside this function is
executed.

IntNumber: Specifies interrupt number (priority). There can be up to 16 vectored IRQ interrupts (0
to 15). The number shows the priority of the interrupt, with 0 indicating highest priority.

install_FIQ (unsigned int channel, void (*ISR) (void)): Configures an interrupt as FIQ. Note
that there can only be one ISR for FIQ.

2. Configure External Interrupt registers

Registers specific to external interrupts also need to be configured. The following configuration is
used for our example.

Configure pin as external interrupt pin

o Pin P0.14 has several functions (GPIO, EINT1, DCD1, and SDA1). By default the pin is
configured as GPIO. We need to change this configuration to EINT1.
Configure external interrupt as edge-triggered or level-triggered
o We will configure it as edge-triggered
Configure external interrupt as rising edge/falling edge triggered or high level/low level
triggered
o We will configure it as falling edge-triggered (When the button is pressed a falling
edge is generated)

You will find all configurations in the function EINT1_Init inside the source file main.c.

Note: There are interrupt flags for each type of interrupt. These flags are set when an
interrupt occurs. They need to be cleared by software inside the ISR.

Task1: Using the provided template write a program that counts the number of button
presses and displays the count value on an LCD. Use EINT1 to detect button presses.

2
 Lab3 Home Work

Reaction Timer

A Reaction timer shows how fast a person can respond to an event. A flow chart for a possible
implementation of a reaction timer is given below. Use the flow chart to write a reaction timer
program. A schematic is provided.

Configure Peripherals
LED ON

Button
Pressed?
NO HINT
To generate random delay
b/n 0 and 20sec
YES
#include <stdlib.h>
LED OFF #include delay.h
Wait a random time
.
Event LED ON
Start Timer from 0 //generate random number b/n 0
//and 20000

int i = rand()%20000;

Reaction delay_ms(i);
NO
Time
Button Use timer library for
Pressed? measuring reaction time
(the library uses Timer 0)
Use EINT1 to detect
Response YES button press

Read timer
Display response(reaction) time
in milliseconds on LCD

You can refer to http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/index.php to see an 3

example reaction timer (web based)