Helmut Schmücker / I2cRtosDriver

RTOS enabled i2c-driver based on the official i2c-C-api.

Dependencies:   mbed-rtos

Fork of mbed-RtosI2cDriver by Helmut Schmücker

I2cRtosDriver

Overview

• Based on RTOS
  • Less busy wait waste of CPU cycles
  • ... but some waste of CPU cycles by context switches
  • Frees up to 80% of CPU resources
• Fixes the bug described in https://mbed.org/forum/bugs-suggestions/topic/4128/
• Spends minimal time in interrupt context
• Supports I2C Master and Slave mode
• Interface compatible to official I2C lib
• Supports LPC1768 and LPC11U24.
• Reuses parts of the official I2C implementation
• The test and example programs work quite well and the results look promising. But this is by no means a thoroughly regression tested library. There might be some surprises left.
• If you want to avoid the RTOS overhead MODI2C might be a better choice.

Usage

• In existing projects simply replace in the I2C interface class declaration the official type by one of the adapters I2CMasterRtos or I2CSlaveRtos described below. The behavior should be the same.
• You can also use the I2CDriver interface directly.
• You can create several instances of I2CMasterRtos, I2CSlaveRtos and I2CDriver. The interface classes are lightweight and work in parallel.
• See also the tests/examples in I2CDriverTest01.h - I2CDriverTest05.h
• The I2CDriver class is the central interface
  • I2CDriver provides a "fat" API for I2C master and slave access
  • It supports on the fly changes between master and slave mode.
  • All requests are blocking. Other threads might do their work while the calling thread waits for the i2c requests to be completed.
  • It ensures mutual exclusive access to the I2C HW.
    • This is realized by a static RTOS mutex for each I2C channel. The mutex is taken by the calling thread on any call of an I2CDriver-function.
    • Thus accesses are prioritized automatically by the priority of the calling user threads.
    • Once having access to the interface the requests are performed with high priority and cannot be interrupted by other threads.
    • Optionally the interface can be locked manually. Useful if one wants to perform a sequence of commands without interruption.

• I2CMasterRtos and I2CSlaveRtos provide an interface compatible to the official mbed I2C interface. Additionally
  • the constructors provide parameters for defining the frequency and the slave address
  • I2CMasterRtos provides a function to read data from a given slave register
  • In contrast to the original interface the I2CSlaveRtos::receive() function is blocking, i.e it returns, when the master sends a request to the listening slave. There is no need to poll the receive status in a loop. Optionally a timeout value can be passed to the function.
  • The stop function provides a timeout mechanism and returns the status. Thus if someone on the bus inhibits the creation of a stop condition by keeping the scl or the sda line low the mbed master won't get freezed.
  • The interface adapters are implemented as object adapters, i.e they hold an I2CDriver-instance, to which they forward the user requests by simple inline functions. The overhead is negligible.

Design

The i2c read and write sequences have been realized in an interrupt service routine. The communicaton between the calling thread and the ISR is realized by a simple static transfer struct and a semaphore ... see i2cRtos_api.c
The start and stop functions still use the busy wait approach. They are not entered that frequently and usually they take less than 12µs at 100kHz bus speed. At 400kHz even less time is consumed. Thus there wouldn't be much benefit if one triggers the whole interrupt/task wait/switch sequence for that short period of time.

Performance

The following performance data have been measured with the small test applications in I2CDriverTest01.h and I2CDriverTest04.h . In these applications a high priority thread, triggered at a rate of 1kHz, reads on each trigger a data packet of given size with given I2C bus speed from a SRF08 ultra sonic ranger or a MPU6050 accelerometer/gyro. At the same time the main thread - running at a lower priority - counts in an endless loop adjacent increments of the mbed's µs-ticker API and calculates a duty cycle from this. These duty cycle measurements are shown in the table below together with the time measured for one read sequence (write address+register; write address and read x byte of data). The measurements have been performed with the ISR/RTOS approach used by this driver and with the busy wait approach used by the official mbed I2C implementation. The i2c implementation can be selected via #define PREFIX in I2CDriver.cpp.

• The time for one read cycle is almost the same for both approaches
• At full load the duty cycle of the low priority thread drops almost to zero for the busy wait approach, whereas with the RTOS/ISR enabled driver it stays at 80%-90% on the LPC1768 and above 65% on the LPC11U24.
• => Especially at low bus speeds and/or high data transfer loads the driver is able to free a significant amount of CPU time.

#ifndef I2CMASTERRTOS_H
#define I2CMASTERRTOS_H

#include "I2CDriver.h"

namespace mbed
{

/// I2C master interface to the RTOS-I2CDriver.
/// The interface is compatible to the original mbed I2C class.
/// Provides an additonal "read from register"-function.
class I2CMasterRtos
{
    I2CDriver m_drv;

public:
    /** Create an I2C Master interface, connected to the specified pins
    *
    *  @param sda I2C data line pin
    *  @param scl I2C clock line pin
    *
    *  @note Has to be created in a thread context, i.e. within the main or some other function. A global delaration does not work
    */
    I2CMasterRtos(PinName sda, PinName scl, int freq=100000):m_drv(sda,scl,freq) {}

    /** Set the frequency of the I2C interface
     *
     *  @param hz The bus frequency in hertz
     */
    void frequency(int hz) {
        m_drv.frequency(hz);
    }

    /** Read from an I2C slave
     *
     * Performs a complete read transaction. The bottom bit of
     * the address is forced to 1 to indicate a read.
     *
     *  @param address 8-bit I2C slave address [ addr | 1 ]
     *  @param data Pointer to the byte-array to read data in to
     *  @param length Number of bytes to read
     *  @param repeated Repeated start, true - don't send stop at end
     *
     *  @returns
     *       0 on success (ack),
     *   non-0 on failure (nack)
     */
    int read(int address, char *data, int length, bool repeated = false) {
        return m_drv.readMaster( address, data, length, repeated);
    }

    /** Read from a given I2C slave register
    *
    * Performs a complete write-register-read-data-transaction. The bottom bit of
    * the address is forced to 1 to indicate a read.
    *
    *  @param address 8-bit I2C slave address [ addr | 1 ]
    *  @param _register 8-bit regster address
    *  @param data Pointer to the byte-array to read data in to
    *  @param length Number of bytes to read
    *  @param repeated Repeated start, true - don't send stop at end
    *
    *  @returns
    *       0 on success (ack),
    *   non-0 on failure (nack)
    */
    int read(int address, uint8_t _register, char* data, int length, bool repeated = false) {
        return m_drv.readMaster( address, _register, data, length, repeated);
    }

    /** Read a single byte from the I2C bus
     *
     *  @param ack indicates if the byte is to be acknowledged (1 = acknowledge)
     *
     *  @returns
     *    the byte read
     */
    int read(int ack) {
        return m_drv.readMaster(ack);
    }

    /** Write to an I2C slave
     *
     * Performs a complete write transaction. The bottom bit of
     * the address is forced to 0 to indicate a write.
     *
     *  @param address 8-bit I2C slave address [ addr | 0 ]
     *  @param data Pointer to the byte-array data to send
     *  @param length Number of bytes to send
     *  @param repeated Repeated start, true - do not send stop at end
     *
     *  @returns
     *       0 on success (ack),
     *   non-0 on failure (nack)
     */
    int write(int address, const char *data, int length, bool repeated = false) {
        return m_drv.writeMaster(address, data, length, repeated);
    }

    /** Write single byte out on the I2C bus
     *
     *  @param data data to write out on bus
     *
     *  @returns
     *    '1' if an ACK was received,
     *    '0' otherwise
     */
    int write(int data) {
        return m_drv.writeMaster(data);
    }

    /** Creates a start condition on the I2C bus
     */

    void start(void) {
        m_drv.startMaster();
    }

    /// Creates a stop condition on the I2C bus
    /// If unsccessful because someone on the bus holds the scl line down it returns "false" after 23µs 
    /// In normal operation the stop shouldn't take longer than 12µs @ 100kHz and 3-4µs @ 400kHz. 
    bool stop(void) {
        return m_drv.stopMaster();
    }

    /// Wait until the interface becomes available.
    ///
    /// Useful if you want to run a sequence of command without interrution by another thread.
    /// There's no need to call this function for running single request, because all driver functions
    /// will lock the device for exclusive access automatically.
    void lock() {
        m_drv.lock();
    }

    /// Unlock the interface that has previously been locked by the same thread.
    void unlock() {
        m_drv.unlock();
    }

};
}


#endif