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watchdog signal of the microcontroller

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puneetnepsam

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what is meant by the watchdog fail signal and reset signals of the microcontroller??..
can anyone plase explain in simple words...
 
The watchdog timer is like a independent clock that will reset the processor after a preset time. You regularly reset it in your code so that if your program gets stuck somewhere, the watchdog will time-out and reset the processor. If used coreectly, it should never time out. But if it does, your processor can recover itself

Jim
 
a watchtod will do a reset to the microcontroller if the uC does not regularly the watchdog. This is in case the program in the uC has a bug or something and falls into an infinite loop.
 
Be careful of the possibility that the device's internal program counter might fail. If it jumps to some invalid place in the program or jumps into a function before the stack has been initialized, really unpredictable stuff can happen! Power surges and many difficult to predict circumstances can cause the program counter to glitch, this is a real world problem especially for high performance requiring systems like in automotive and medical fields... and more expensively in space exploration ( I think this is what happened to one of the Mars robots)...

If the program counter jumps into a loop that contains an if and then based break sequence and if the conditions of that if and then statement were not loaded (because the program counter jumped into the function by malfunction) then it is totally possible that an infinite loop can occur... and if a clear wdt is inside that loop the program will lock up indefinitely and the watch dog timer will have absolutely no ability to correct the problem, since it will never overflow and generate a reset pulse.

External watch dog timers can be implemented, specially designed code, and redunancy can be incorporated to ensure your design has the desired stability.

Good luck with you projects!

Best Regards,

Jesse Randall
Electronics Engineer
**broken link removed**
 
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