Texas Instruments MSP430 Student Guide

Timers
Introduction
Timers are often thought of as the heartbeat of an embedded system.
Whether you need a periodic wake-up call, a one-time delay, or need a means to verify that the
system is running without failure, Timers are the solution.
This chapter begins with a brief summary of the MSP430 Timers. Most of the chapter, though, is
spent digging into the details of the MSP430’s TIMER_A module. Not only does it provide
rudimentary counting/timing features, but provides sophisticated capture and compare features
that allow a variety of complex waveforms – or interrupts – to be generated. In fact, this timer can
even generate PWM (pulse width modulation) signals.
Along the way, we examine the MSP430ware DriverLib code required to setup and utilize
TIMER_A.
As the chapter nears conclusion, there’s a brief summary of the differences between TIMER_A
and TIMER_B. Bottom line, if you know how to use TIMER_A, then you can use TIMER_B; but,
there are a couple of extra features that TIMER_B provides.
Learning Objectives
MSP430 Workshop - Timers 6 - 1

Texas Instruments MSP430 Specifications

General

Brand	Texas Instruments
Model	MSP430
Category	Microcontrollers
Language	English