Michael Lemmon
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Notre Dame
Hardware interrupts such as the output compare interrupt allow micro-controllers to schedule process execution in real-time. Another important role of hardware interrupts is that they allow the micro-controller to respond in an asynchronous manner to external events. By "asynchronous", we mean that the occurrence of the external event can occur at any time, either on or between the micro-controller's clock tick. This learning module focuses on the input capture interrupt. Input capture interrupts are hardware interrupts that are tied to a change in the logical state of an input pin. This type of interrupt allows the micro-controller to respond quickly to asynchronous external events.