PIC Tutorial 6 - Reading from the I/O ports

Reading from the I/O ports

Up to now, we have been writing to Port A so that we can turn an LED on and off. Now, we are going to look at how we can read the I/O pins on the ports. This is so that we can connect an external circuit, and act on any outputs it gives.

If you recall from our previous tutorials, in order to set up the I/O ports, we had to switch from Bank 0 to Bank 1. Let us do that first:

STATUS          equ       03h           ;Address of the STATUS register
TRISA             equ       85h           ;Address of the tristate register for port A
PORTA            equ       05h           ;Address of Port A
bsf                 STATUS,5              ;Switch to Bank 1

Now, to set up the port to be an output, we sent a 0 to the TrisA register.  To set a pin on a port to be an input, we send a 1 to the TisA register.

movlw              01h               ;Set the Port A pins
movwf             TRISA            ;to input.
bcf                  STATUS,5      ;Switch back to Bank 0

Now we have set bit 0 of Port A to input. What we need to do now is to check if the pin is high or low. For this, we can use one of two instructions: BTFSC and BTFSS.

The BTFSC instruction means ‘Do a bit test on the register and bit we specify. If it is a 0, then we skip the next instruction’. BTFSS means ‘Do a bit test in the register and bit we specify. If it is set to a 1, then we skip the next instruction.’

Which one we use, depends on how we want our program to react when we read the input. For example, if we are simply waiting for the input to be a 1, then we could use the BTFSS instruction like this:

Code here

BTFSS             PortA,0
Goto start
Carry on here:
:

The program will only move onto ‘Carry on here’ only if bit 0 on PortA is set to a 1.

Let us now write a program which will flash an LED at one speed, but if a switch is closed it will flash the LED twice as slow. You can probably work this program out for yourself, but We have included the listing anyway.  You could try and write the whole program, just to see if you have grasped the concepts. We are using the same circuit as before, with the addition of a switch connected RA0 of the PIC and the positive rail of our supply.

;*****Set up the Constants****

STATUS         equ       03h              ;Address of the STATUS register
TRISA            equ       85h              ;Address of the tristate register for port A
PORTA           equ       05h              ;Address of Port A
COUNT1         equ       08h              ;First counter for our delay loops
COUNT2         equ       09h              ;Second counter for our delay loops

;****Set up the port****

bsf                  STATUS,5       ;Switch to Bank 1
movlw              01h               ;Set the Port A pins:
movwf             TRISA            ;bit 1to output, bit 0 to input.
bcf                  STATUS,5      ;Switch back to Bank 0 

;****Turn the LED on****

Start                 movlw       02h        ;Turn the LED on by first putting it
movwf              PORTA                     ;into the w register and then on the port

;****Check if the switch is closed

BTFSC            PORTA,0         ;Get the value from PORT A
                                             ;BIT 0. If it is a zero
call                   Delay               ;a zero, carry on as normal.
                                              ;If is is a 1, then add an
                                              ;extra delay routine

;****Add a delay

call       Delay

;****Delay finished, now turn the LED off****

movlw              00h               ;Turn the LED off by first putting it
movwf              PORTA           ;into the w register and then on the port

;****Check if the switch is still closed

BTFSC                         PORTA,0        ;Get the value from PORT A
                                                     ;BIT 0. If it is a zero,
call                             Delay             ;carry on as normal.
                                                      ;If is a 1, then add an
                                                      ;extra delay routine

;****Add another delay****

call       Delay

;****Now go back to the start of the program

goto                 Start                 ;go back to Start and turn LED on again

;****Here is our Subroutine

Delay

Loop1          decfsz            COUNT1,1     ;This second loop keeps the LED
                   goto               Loop1          ;turned off long enough for us to
                   decfsz            COUNT2,1     ;see it turned off
                   goto               Loop1          ;
return

 ;****End of the program****

end                                   ;Needed by some compilers, and also
                                        ;just in case we miss the goto instruction.

What we have done here is to turn the LED on. We then check to see if the switch is closed. If it is closed, then we make a call to our delay subroutine. This gives us the same delay as before, but we are now calling it twice. The same goes for when the LED is off. If the switch is not closed, then we have our old on and off times.

You can compile and run this program. However a word of warning.  The final circuit and code will look un-impressive to someone who is not interested in programming microcontrollers. So, don’t be upset if, when you show your family and friends how you can change the speed of a flashing LED with a switch, they show very little interest – We are talking from personal experience, here!

If you have been following these tutorials from the start, then you may be interested to know that you have now learnt 10 of the 35 instructions for the PIC 16F84!  And all of these have been learnt just by simply turning an LED on and off.

Click here  >>>>  Tutorial 7