So what?
In this lab we're going to use the MSP430's GPIO pins, combined with some external switches and an LED display, to build a basic I/O system for our board. Because of how things fit together on the board, it makes sense to use P1.0-P1.3 (the first three Port_1 GPIO Pins) to read the input switches and P1.4-P1.7 for the output signals.
Outputs
Setting up the outputs is easy-- simply set the upper four bits (bits 4-7) of&P1DIR to "1", and then write the output to the upper four bits of
&P1OUT . That means you'll have to shift your data left 4 positions before output, but you should already know a simple technique to do so!
&P1DIR values only connects or disconnects the driving circuitry built into the MSP430. In advanced applications this can be used to analyze potential faults in the circuitry outside the chip.
Inputs
Inputs are also "easy," but there are a few hardware concepts you'll need before you understand how they work!A little bit about wires
As mentioned briefly in class, binary digital logic has two valid states, plus one third mystery state. That third state, "The High Impedance State," (High-Z) just means that the wire isn't connected to anything. You've already talked about using so called tri-state buffers to negotiate who can talk on a shared bus-- the listening components enter the high impedance state, allowing the transmitting component's signal to drive the bus with no conflicts.
A basic switch
In order to read useful input from your switches, you need them to be "0" in one state, and "1" in the other. Yet knowing what you know about the third state, the switch shown above will actually give a "0"/"1" (depending on what you connect it to) when closed and "High-Z" when open. Because there's nothing else driving the sensor input besides our switch, the input value will be random when the switch is open . In digital logic this is called floating, and it is a very very bad thing.
One simple solution is the Pull-Up (or Pull-Down) Resistor . Connecting the floating side of the switch to a logic level through a large resistor will tie down the floating input when the switch is open, but won't effect the read value much when the switch is closed.
Pull-ups in the msp430
For better or for worse, the MSP430 actually has pull up resistors already built into the chip's hardware. Configuring them takes several steps, but once setup they provide all the functionality above without the extra external connections.- Set the Pin Direction for P1.0-P1.3 to input. (Set bits 0-3 of
&P1DIRto "0") - Enable the resistors themselves. (Set bits 0-3 of
&P1RENto "1") - Configure the resistors to be pull-up. (Set bits 0-3 of
&P1OUTto "1")
P1OUT . Because of the hardware implementation on the MSP430,
&P1OUT controls the outputs as well as the connections to the pull up resistors.
You will need to ensure that every time you output a value, you KEEP the lower four bits "1" . The easiest way to do this is just by ORing your raw output with the constant
#0Fh before you write to
P1OUT . The MSP430 does not have a specific "or" instruction by name, but
bis does the same thing. For more info on
bis and its inverse
bic , see
next week's lab. Polling
- A traditional single threaded polling scheme consists of a main loop that runs continuously. Within that loop, the processor periodically checks for changes, and if there are none, continues looping. Once a change is detected, the program moves to a new section of code or calls a new subroutine to deal with the changes.
- Polling has advantages and disadvantages-- it keeps program execution linear and is very easy to code and implement, but it also is not incredibly responsive. Since polling only checks values at certain points in the main run loop, if the loop is long or changes occur quickly, a polling scheme can miss input data. For now though it will suffice.
Philosophy
Assignment details
Your task is to code a simple input to output echo program for the MSP430. Your program should consist of:
- A setup section that runs once and configures the GPIO pins
- A main loop that runs infinitely
- Code inside your loop to read the state of the GPIO input pins
- A separate section of code to write the changes to the output pins and then return to the main loop
Masking
You should already know the basics of masking from class, but it becomes very important when dealing with I/O. Since different pins do different things in the same port (P1), you the programmer will have to be careful not to accidentally modify the wrong bits even though your instructions will operate on the entire register.All images drawn by Matt Johnson, Rice ECE