1Hz Clock Generator using PIC12F675

marommuhammad

Friday, February 20, 2009

Based on the idea from http://www.josepino.com/pic_projects/?timebaseI have created a 1Hz Clock Generator. I use PIC12F675 as it's available locally. Its price is just about US$1.
The concept is using 32.768kHz crystal as a clock for the PIC. Therefor, the internal instruction clock is 32768/4 = 8192 Hz. By using the 16 bit Timer1 to count the instruction clock cycles, the interrupt will occur every 8 second. This period can be reduced by setting initial value of the Timer1 (TMR1H:TMR1L). I have to make Timer1 to count up to 8192 for generating overflow interrupt every 1 second. To make Timer1 count up to 8192, the initial value of TMR1 must be 65536-8192 = 57344 or 0xE000. This means TMR1H = 0xE0 and TMR1L = 0x00. In this case, I need to set only the TMR1H=0xE0 and let TMR1L runs continuously. By changing the initial value of Timer1, I can generate almost any frequencies.

An application for this project is a precise 1Hz blinking LED signal :) ha ha. I know that it's not useful but I think it's fun to look at (am I crazy?). Another application is a precise 1Hz time base for a clock.

The source code is written in MikroC.

// PIC12F675
// 1Hz Time Base Osc.
// Timer1 Module
// 32.768 KHz
unsigned short tick;
void Init ();
void interrupt ()
{
        if (PIR1.TMR1IF)
        {
                TMR1H = 0xE0;
                PIR1.TMR1IF = 0;
                tick = 1;
        }
}
void main ()
{
        tick = 0;
        //Initialize Ports and Timer1 Module
        Init ();
        while (1)
        {
                if (tick)
                {
                        tick = 0;
                        GPIO = (1 << 2);
                }
                if (TMR1H > 0xF0)
                {
                        GPIO = 0;
                }
        }
}
void Init ()
{
        TRISIO = 0;
        //Make all pins as output ports
        GPIO = 0;
        //Use Timer1 module
        INTCON.GIE = 1;
        INTCON.PEIE = 1;
        T1CON = 0x01;
        //Overflow every 8192
        TMR1H = 0xE0;
        TMR1L = 0x00;
        //  Enable TMR1 interrupt
        PIE1.TMR1IE = 1;
}

The schematic is as the following image.