EE 109 - Spring 2026 Introduction to Embedded Systems

Lab 6

Rotary Encoders and Interrupts

Honor Statement

This is an individual assignment. The code you write, use for the demo and submit should be wholly your own and not produced by working in teams or using, in part or in whole, code written by someone else (found online, from a fellow student, acquaintance, etc.). You will be asked to verify this when you submit your code on Vocareum by signing your name in the honor.txt file on Vocareum. Penalties for violation include a 0 on the assignment and a potential further deduction or referral to Student Judicial Affairs.

Introduction

In this lab exercise you will learn how rotary encoders work and how the performance of the program can be improved by using interrupts rather than polling to monitor the inputs from the encoder.

The encoder will be used to control the incrementing and decrementing of a number that will be displayed on the LCD. The value of that number determines how long the program will take to play a sequence of 25 tones on the buzzer. Turning the encoder in one direction increments the count, turning in the opposite direction decrements it. The number on the LCD is the time it will take to play the sequence in tenth of seconds.

For a copy of the Lab 6 grading sheet, click here

Displaying binary numbers

As part of this lab you will have to display on the LCD a number that shows the value of count variable that is incremented or decremented by turning the rotary encoder. Up to this point we have only displayed constant strings like “Hello there” by using the lcd_stringout function. So how can we display the value of variable that contains some binary value? Many people try doing the following only to find out that it doesn’t work.

int x = 1234;

lcd_stringout(x);

The “x” variable contains the value 1234. It’s not the name of an array containing the ASCII codes for ‘1’,’2’, ‘3’, ‘4’ and then a zero byte. If we try the above code the LCD will end up with either nothing or garbage displayed on it, and the Arduino’s program may stop running.

It’s important to remember that the LCD only displays ASCII characters. Any other type of value must somehow be converted into an array of ASCII characters, a C string, before it can be displayed. In the section below we will discuss the snprintf function which is used to convert binary variables to a C string of ASCII codes.

Creating character strings

Since the LCD is used to display strings of characters, it’s necessary to have a efficient way to create the strings to be displayed. Constant strings are no problem and can be given as an argument to the lcd_stringout function.

lcd_stringout("Hello, world");

It gets more complicated when you need to create a string containing variable values, such as numbers. For example, in C++ when you write

cout << "Answer is " << x << endl;

cout is converting the numeric value of x into the ASCII representation of that number.

In C, the best tool for creating character strings is the snprintf function that is a standard part of most C languages. Important: In order use snprintf, or any other routine from the C standard I/O library, you must have the following line at the top of the program with the other #include statements.

#include <stdio.h>

The snprintf function is called in the following manner

snprintf(buffer, size, format, arg1, arg2, arg3, ...);

A quick example is:

char buf[17];
int x = /* some value */
snprintf(buf, 17, "Answer is %d", x);
lcd_stringout(buf);

The arguments for snprintf are:

buffer

The destination char array large enough to hold the resulting string including the NULL byte that has to be at the end. For example, if you want to store 4-digit numbers in a array, the array must be at least 5 elements long.

size

The size of the destination char array. This tells the snprintf program the maximum number of character it can put in buffer regardless of how many you try to make it do. Keep in mind that the snprintf functions always puts a NULL byte at the end of the string it creates. If you call snprintf with a “size” argument of five, and try to put “12345” in the array, you will end up with the string “1234”.

format

The heart of the snprintf function is a character string containing formatting codes that tell the function exactly how you want the following arguments to be formatted in the output string. More on this below.

arguments

After the format argument comes zero or more variables containing the values to be placed in the string according to the formatting codes that appear in the format argument. For every formatting code that appears in the format argument, there must be a corresponding argument containing the value to be formatted.

The Format Argument in snprintf

The format argument tells snprintf how to format the output string. Typical format arguments can contain plain text that is copied verbatim to the output buffer, and formatting codes that specify how to translate the variables into ASCII character codes. There are a large number of formattting codes that can be used depending on how an argument is to be converted to ASCII codes. The formatting codes all start with a percent sign and for now we will only be working with two of them (and a simple variation of one of them):

The format string must have the same number of formatting codes as there are arguments that follow the format argument in the function call. Each formatting code tells how to format its corresponding argument. The first code tells how to format “arg1”, the second code is for “arg2”, etc. Anything in the format argument that is not a formatting code will be copied verbatim from the format string to the output string.

Example: Assume you have three unsigned char variables containing the month, day and year values, and a string variable containing the day of the week, and you want to create a string of the form “Date is month/day/year = dayofweek”.

char date[30];
unsigned char month, day, year;
char *dayofweek = "Wednesday";
month = 2
day = 14;
year = 18;

snprintf(date, 30, "Date is %d/%d/%d = %s", month, day, year, dayofweek);

After the function has executed, the array “date” will contain

Date is 2/14/18 = Wednesday

Since you told snprintf that the size of the array was 30, the maximum number of characters it will put in the array is 29 since as with all C strings, the string has to be terminated with a null byte (0x00).

An additional example is shown here:

char x = 10, char y = 12;
char z = x - y;
char buf[12]; // make sure you add one spot for the null character
snprintf(buf, 12, "%d-%d=%d", x, y, z); // yields "10-12=-2" but not on the LCD
lcd_stringout(buf); // prints "10-12=-2" on the LCD

Beautifying Your Output

Often times we may want a number to take up a fixed number of spaces on the screen. For example if we print out 9 and then 10 the fact that 10 grew into a 2nd digit may make the visual layout look sloppy. We might want all our numbers to use 2 digits (if we know in advance that they will be in the range 00-99) or 3 digits (if we know the range will be 0-255). To do this we can add modifiers to the %d format string modifier.

We can also set the string to use 0-padding to fill in blank spaces with 0s.

A good reference for format strings can be found here

The Rotary Encoder (Background Covered in Introductory Video)

This section is a brief introduction to the rotary encoder that is discussed in more detail in the introductory video that should be watched before attempting to do this lab assignment.

A rotary encoder is used to determine the angular position of something that rotates. For example, you are building a weather monitoring system and one of the devices providing input to the system is a weather vane that rotates to point in the direction the wind is blowing. The weather vane can be attached to a rotary encoder and the system reads the inputs from the encoder to see what angle the vane is pointing. Rotary encoders are also commonly used in devices that have a knob on them that the user needs to turn to adjust something.

Rotary encoders come in two types: absolute encoders and incremental encoders. An absolute encoder has outputs to provide a binary number for each angular position of the shaft (0000 = 0°, 0001 = 22.5°, 0010 = 45°, etc.) The number of bits the encoder provides determines the resolution of the angle that can encoded. For example a 10-bit absolute encoder can resolve angles to 360 / 1024 = 0.35°.

Incremental encoders, also called quadrature encoders, are also available in a variety of resolutions (16, 64, 256, etc. per revolution) but they only provides information about whether the shaft has been turned clockwise or counter-clockwise from the previous position, nothing about the actual position of the shaft. As the shaft of one of these encoders is turned, it opens and closes two switches inside the encoder that generate two binary signals.

Image

The two switches can be used (when pull-up resistors are installed) to produce as the encoder is rotated two signals that both look like a 50% duty cycle square wave (see below) but they are 90° out of phase with each other, which gives the appearance when drawn that one of the square waves is lagging behind the other by one quarter of a period.

To see how this can work, examine the diagram below and move along the waveforms from left to right as they would be generated when the control is being rotated clockwise. If we consider the two signals as the outputs of state machine where B is the MSB and A is the LSB, then the output code goes through the sequence 00, 01, 11, 10, 00, 01, etc. as the control is rotated.

Image

Now try moving along the waveforms from right to left (control being rotated counter-clockwise) and we can see that the output code goes through the sequence 00, 10, 11, 01, 00, etc. as the control is rotated. Note that the sequence is different depending on whether the control is being rotated clockwise or counter-clockwise. In fact every one of the transitions from one two-bit code to another in the clockwise direction is different from the ones that appear when rotating counter-clockwise. As a result whenever there is a code change the direction of rotation can be determined by knowing the old code and the new code.

The above sequences of numbers is called a Gray code and has the property that as you go from one number in the sequence to the next, in either direction, only one bit changes at every transition. Gray codes, usually with many more than two bits in them, are also used in absolute rotary encoders used to encode the position information in electromechanical devices such as scanners, printers, manufacturing equipment and many others. The property that only one bits changes at a time helps to eliminate errors in sensing the device’s position. If a normal binary code was used there would be numerous places in the sequence where multiple bits would have to change simultaneously. With mechanical equipment, it’s impossible to ensure that all the bits would change at exactly the same time and this can lead to errors as to the position or status of the device.

Using the two-bit Gray code number as a state variable we can construct the state diagram below for a state machine that describes the output of the encoder. Each of the four states corresponds to one of the four sets of output values the control can generate. From each state there are two transitions to an adjacent state, one for each of the code bits that might change. One transition is for clockwise rotation and the other is for counter-clockwise rotation. The direction of rotation is marked on the transition line.

Image

The encoders provided for the lab exercise go through 64 states in the process of one revolution of the knob. The pins on the bottom are arranged with two pins (A and B) on one side, and the pin that goes to ground is on the opposite side. It’s not too important which pin is A or B since swapping them only makes the state machine count in the opposite direction for a given direction of rotation.

Task 1 - The Circuit

You will need the rotary encoder, buzzer and a button from the parts bag in your tool kit. The rotary encoder has a blue square base with three pins sticking out and a silver or black knob attached to it. The buzzer is round and black with two pins on the bottom.

Install the rotary encoder on the breadboard being careful to make sure that all three pins are in different sets of the five hole connections strips (see below). Make the connections between the encoder and the Arduino as shown in schematic diagram below.

Two I/O port bits will be required for reading the encoder output into the Arduino, one will be required for the buzzer output, and one for the button input. To standardize things, everyone should use the A1 and A5 bits (Port C, bits 1 and 5) for the encoder inputs, D12 (Port B, bit 4) for the buzzer output, and D2 (Port D, bit 2) for the button input.

Image

The buzzer has two pins on the bottom and these should be placed in two separate 5-hole connection block as shown below. There is no polarity to the buzzer so it doesn’t matter which way it is oriented.

IMPORTANT: If the buzzer is new, it may have a piece of yellow plastic over the top of it. This needs to be peeled off before using it or the buzzer output will be very hard to hear.

Image

Use your male-female jumpers to make the five connections needed between the breadboard and the Arduino as shown in the schematic.

When connecting the buzzer make sure you are using the correct pin on the LCD for D12 (PB4). The D12 pin is marked in white lettering along the row of pins that stick up on the LCD. Don’t plug a wire into the black connector above where the Arduino is marked “12” since this is actually the “RX” input to the Arduino and if there is a signal present on that input it can interfere with the “make flash” step.

Image

Install a button on the breadboard and connect it to Group D, bit 2 (PD2) on the Arduino.

Task 2 - Complete the Counter Program

From the table in front of the podium, get a copy of the source code for a program that would run on the circuit you just built to increment or decrement a count value as the encoder is rotated. Your task is to complete the program by filling in the parts of the program that have been left blank.

When you have completed this task, show it to one of the instructors for credit.

Task 3: Producing Tones on the Buzzer

In this task you will add code to the lab6.c file to have it play a sequence of 25 tones that rise in frequency over time span that you determine with the encoder. Most of the code has been written for you but you will still have to do the following parts of this task.

Set up the Lab 6 assignment the same as has been done previously by creating a lab6 folder in your ee109 folder.

Open the lab6.c file in your editor and make the additions and changes described below.

In this task, we want you to practice creating strings that contain variable values using snprintf(). Look for the portion of the code near the top where it says to add a “splash screen”. In this section add code to display two lines of text on the LCD. The first line on the LCD should display your name (as much as will fit) on the first row. The second row should contain a string with your birthday that was created using snprintf, similar to the way the string above was formatted with a date using numerical values and the “%d” format strings. It should be displayed somewhat centered on the bottom row and not just start at the 0-th column of the row. This ensures you understand how to use the lcd_moveto function. After both rows are displayed on the LCD, make the program delay for 1 second, and then clear the screen.

<pre>
  /* Call lcd_stringout to print out your name */

  /* Use snprintf to create a string with your birthdate */

  /* Use lcd_moveto to start at an appropriate column
     in the bottom row to appear centered */

  /* Use lcd_stringout to print the birthdate string */

  /* Delay 1 second */

  /* Use lcd_writecommand to clear the screen */
</pre>

Now add more code to the lab6.c as described below.

Your program will contain a variable that increments or decrements by one for each state change of the encoder outputs. Turning the encoder in one direction increments the count, turning in the opposite direction decrements it. Since there are 64 encoder state changes for each revolution, the count should go up or down 64 each time the encoder is turned one revolution. Your code will have to limit the value to being between 10 and 80. The number will be used to determine how quickly the sequence of tones is played.

At the start of the lab6.c file some variables are defined for you.

The beginning of the program is as follows.

Following the above code is the main loop of the program which does two things.

When you run the program you should be able to rotate the knob back and forth and see the numbers change on the display.

Results

The answers to the review questions below should be edited into the Lab6_Answers.txt file. The Lab6_Answers.txt file and all source code (lab6.c that uses interrupts, lcd.c, lcd.h and Makefile) must be uploaded to the Vocareum web site by the due date. See the Assignments page of the class web site for a link for uploading.

Please make sure to save all the parts used in this lab in your project box. These will be needed for labs throughout the rest of the semester. We suggest also saving all the pieces of wire you cut and stripped since those will be useful in later labs.

Review Questions

Answer the following questions and submit them in a separate text file (“Lab6_Answers.txt”) along with your source code.

  1. TIMER1 is to be used to output a 50% duty cycle signal (squarewave) for tone generation as was done in this lab. For the two tones specified below, determine a prescalar, the OCR1A value, and the number of interrupts to allow before stopping the timer. Your answer for the prescalar and OCR1A values should be the ones that give the most accurate timing.

    • 200 Hz tone for 5 seconds
    • 32 Hz tone for 2 seconds

  2. Briefly explain why updating the LCD display in your ISR could lead to undesirable behavior for this lab.