English

Microcontroller interrupts for flexible control of time critical tasks in experiments with laser cooled atoms

Instrumentation and Detectors 2011-04-04 v1 Atomic Physics

Abstract

I detail applications of timer interrupts in a popular micro-controller family to time critical applications in laser-cooling type experiments. I demonstrate a low overhead 1-bit frequency locking scheme and a multichannel experimental sequencer using the timer-counter intterrupts to achieve accurate timing along with flexible interfaces. The general purpose nature of micro-controllers can offer unique functionality compared with commercial solutions due to the flexibility of a computer controlled interface without the poor latencies associated with computer timing.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1104.0064,
  title  = {Microcontroller interrupts for flexible control of time critical tasks in experiments with laser cooled atoms},
  author = {Mark Sadgrove},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1104.0064},
  year   = {2011}
}