Good evening,
I am currently working on my first Arduino project and I was wondering if anyone knew the limits to running the Arduino. Assuming I had a constant power supply and proper ventilation, could I run the Arduino continuously without having to worry about messing it up over time?
No limit, it will run as long as it's powered.
Perfect! Thank you.
I believe your answer very related to what you're doing with your sketch.
For example, there is a function called Millis() (millis() - Arduino Reference) that overflows after 50 days of use. So you should think about this limitation when making sketches that are required to run for a greater amount of time.
Or maybe, if you are using an LCD , and you're not refreshing it every now and then, you could experience some improper characters on screen due to minimal fluctuations in your power line.
But, in the end, Arduino doesn't seem to have any problem of hardware due to long times running. At least, none that I know.
Hope it helped!
millis() does go from 0xffffffff to 0x00 and then continues on after 49 days and some hours, true.
If your time tracking is performed as
if ( (currentTime - earlierTime) >= interval){
// time interval elapsed, do something
}
then the rollover is a non-factor.
Try it:
time just after rollover: 0x00000010
time just before rollover: 0xfffffff0
then: 0x00000010 - 0xfffffff0 = 0x00000020, just as you'd expect.
You can see this with windows calculator in programmer mode - the result is ffffffff00000020
the upper 8 fs do not exist in arduino tho as micros() and millis() are only 32 bit numbers: 0x00000020