Timer Interrupt longer than 8 secs?

Using Arduino Project Guidance
#1

I wish an interrupt to take readings every 10 seconds and make a calculation, and I am limited by Timer1.

So far I am using a timer initialisation of 1 second and incrementing int x to only running the code to read and calculate every 10 times.

Is there a better way?

Could I use a RTC to do this?

#2

Yes... http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=223286.0

#3

Apologies, but I can’t seem to find the part about using timer interrupts?

#4

Taking sensor readings every 10 seconds will never be an appropriate use of interrupts. Save yourself a great deal of headache. Use the correct tool. In this case, blink-without-delay is the correct tool.

#5

The demo several things at a time is an extended example of the BWoD technique.

...R

#6

Thanks, I see what you mean now. Unfortunately due to some convoluted code I am using; through phi prompt; I have my main code before running inside a while loop in the menu system. The whole loop was taking approx 4 secs to run and originally I wanted samples every 1 seconds.

This is why I took it outside to a timer interrupt. This worked but I then discovered that 1 sec was far too frequent as I was running a PID calculation and the Integral Term was becoming enormous in the slow response of the temperature system it was controlling.

I considered moving back to code when I moved back to 10 second readings using mills() again but my concern was that if the loop is 4 seconds then the comparison would be true after 3 loops the first time then 2 on the second time through causing inconsistency?

#7

dave_robinson_022:
if the loop is 4 seconds then the comparison would ....

Time to start over and write a program that loops 100 times per second (or much faster).

...R

#8

True;

Time to stop being idle and learn to use switch cases and LCD menu systems rather than relying on albeit good, but probably inappropriate libraries.

#9