Hi all!

I am trying to use a qeueu to get data from an interrupt to a task. The interrupt is trigged by the UART. I receive a character there and send it with a queue to a task. The task should evaluate what character it received and according to that should light a led.

In the same task I also have a function that will send back the character that the microcontroller received just to test if the queue was working. I receive the character on my serial monitor no problem. The problem is I start receiving the same character over and over again even if I don't send any new characters. I don't really understand why this is happening, because when I used queues before the same way this never happened. Can anyone please explain this behaviour to me?

this is my task:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

xQueueHandle UART_queue=0; /******************************************************************************/

void examinertask() { while (1) { char stringreceived;

    if(xQueueReceive( UART_queue , &string_received , 1000))
    {
        if( string_received=='s' )
        {
            LATAbits.LATA0=1;
        }

        else LATAbits.LATA0=0;
    }

    UART1PutChar(string_received);
}

}

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

this is the interrupt handler:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

void attribute((interrupt, noautopsv)) U1RXInterrupt(void) { unsigned char datain = 0;

data_in=U1RXREG; // save register value

xQueueSend(UART_queue , &data_in , 1000); // send data via queue

_U1RXIF = 0; // Clear the UART Recieve Interrupt Flag

}

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

if I use xQueueSendToFrontFromISR(UARTqueue, &datain, &xHigherPriorityTaskWoken); the same thing is happening

UART1PutChar() will be called with the last character for every loop regardless of an item in the queue. Before your first letter received, it will output whatever is in string_received at initialization.

but isnt the task only woken up when there is something in the queue?

send it with a queue to a task.

That is fine for low bandwidth comms, such as receiving key presses, but very inefficient for high bandwidth comms where a circular buffer or DMA is better.

 while  (1)
 {
     char  string_received;

     if(xQueueReceive(  UART_queue  ,  &string_received  ,  1000))
     {
         if(  string_received=='s'  )
         {
             LATAbits.LATA0=1;
         }

         else  LATAbits.LATA0=0;
     }

     UART1PutChar(string_received);
 }

}

If you receive only one character then this code will print out that character every 1000 ticks. That is because you have the queue receive timeout set to 1000, and print the character stored in string_received whether a new value was received on the queue or not. Moving the UART1PutChar() call inside the if() statement would fix that.

void attribute((interrupt, noautopsv)) _U1RXInterrupt(void)

I'm guessing this is a PIC32? Please read the documentation page for this port as the way you are defining your interrupt is going to waste a lot of RAM (although it will work).

 xQueueSend(UART_queue  ,  &data_in  ,  1000);  // send data via queue

xQueueSend() cannot be called from an interrupt and definitely cannot attempt to block in an interrupt. Please use xQueueSendFromISR() instead and be sure to read the FAQs, especially the FAQ "My application does not run, what could be wrong?".

Regards.

but isnt the task only woken up when there is something in the queue?

Please see my reply to your first post - your code is not checking if anything is received or not before just printing out whatever was received last.

Regards.

Thank you for the answers, cleared up a lot of things!

I am using a dspic33fj128mc802.

"Please read the documentation page for this port"

http://www.freertos.org/portpic24_dspic.html

This was all I found, but i'm not sure what I should be looking for in here. I don't know any alternative ways of declaring an interrupt handler. Is this only a FreeRTOS concern or if I weren't using FreeRTOS this declaration would still be bad?

Thanks! Cheers

Sorry - I was thinking it was a PIC32 - you can disregard that part of my reply.

Regards.

In the dspic demo project in serial.c this is how interrupts are defined, they are the same as mine:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ void attribute((interrupt, autopsv)) _U2RXInterrupt( void ) { char cChar; portBASETYPE xHigherPriorityTaskWoken = pdFALSE;

/* Get the character and post it on the queue of Rxed characters.
If the post causes a task to wake force a context switch as the woken task
may have a higher priority than the task we have interrupted. */
IFS1bits.U2RXIF = serCLEAR_FLAG;
while( U2STAbits.URXDA )
{
	cChar = U2RXREG;
	xQueueSendFromISR( xRxedChars, &cChar, &xHigherPriorityTaskWoken );
}

if( xHigherPriorityTaskWoken != pdFALSE )
{
	taskYIELD();
}

} ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sorry I didn't see your reply!