How to use Timers on the RPi PICO 

Well explained and for the like and subscription well deserved!!! Thanks for this simple but very good demo!!!

Thank you for the explanation! It helps me a lot!

Very nicely presented, thank you. Just checked out your channel after watching a couple of your Pico vids. I'm a big Pico fan from when it was launched here in the UK in early '21. I was going to subscribe on the basis of the Pico content alone, but was then amazed to see that you share another passion of mine - woodworking! I'd got to the stage of combining the electronics stuff with some of my woodworking projects when a change in my circumstances meant that all of my machines are now in storage. Hopefully not for too much longer. Meantime I'll binge on your vids. Good luck with the channel.

Thank you for the info on timers and IRQ handling. Looking forward to your eventual updates.

Thank you very much for your workshoop so it was very helpful

I think this basic explanation for beginners is very well done. Only now from the point of view of those who want to write more complex routines or are approaching the RAM limit, you shouldn't be so wasteful with it. You don't have to first import the "machine" library as a whole, and then import individual components like the "timer" again separately. This can be greatly reduced by summarizing all of them with "from machine import Pin, Timer", the same applies to "utime". I would also like to note that the Python directive states that no subfunction accesses global objects of the MAIN. So it looks like this, and would also simplify subsequent improvements / extensions. def blink(pin): [tab]pin.toggle() the timer itself comes with: Blue_Timer = Timer(period = 2_000, mode = Timer.PERIODIC, callback = lambda t: blink(blue)) Instead of then, as shown later, because the function content is always the same, you can save yourself these 3 additional subprograms / functions by only assigning a different PIN for Timer-Init. A blink function is then sufficient for this to toggle several different LEDs on different GPIOs.

Good stuff … subscribed

Nice video, thanks for it.

nice video!

good stuff

Another well done video/tutorial Chris. The word "Source" in the functions parameter brackets baffled me for a bit until I figured out its just a word, holding a place for the period value in the Timer function. Correct me if I'm wrong. I need to get a better understanding of functions probably.

👍

Coming from Arduino ide to micro python, thanks for your help. Will check your other videos.

Great tutorial! Similar to the 'pumper timer' example, could I also call the Timer mode ONE_SHOT from inside a function to then execute a general cleanup/shutdown process, e.g., xyz.deinit(), pin.value(0), etc. I'm positive it could but wanted your input if this is an acceptable practice. Thanks again!

Really enjoyed this video... I hope you continue doing more videos about the pico. I do have 1 question for you... If you import the machine library, why then do you have to import the timer from the machine library again? I quite new to this and don't understand why this is required... Thanks!

Very good explanation! Thinking about corner cases where two or more timers are triggered at the same time. Is that even possible? Could there be a chance of a race condition or maybe one of the interrupts don't get called? Thanks!

Interesting! Would you implement a PWM with a timer? I guess you could always use a recurring to switch on the signal and a one-shot to switch it off. But would a millisecond timer be fine enough for that for let's say audio?

thx for a great tutorial, now functioning right here on my r.pi. i am trying to import a timer that opens a number of pins, each for their own (x) sec, closes for each their (y) sec, for the entire given period - instead of blinking in even intervals - and then onwards to the next of in all 12 periods, before it loops to the first period - but apparently micro python does not yet incorporate this function. do i have to transfer to c+, or what is your take on this one?

Great video Chris! I have a question and maybe you can point me in the right direction. I have setup a pico with a LCD and RTC, which basically runs as a clock and date display. I would like to have an event or relay trigger at a preset start time and continue until a preset stop time. My gola is to have 2 relays turn on/off at preset times. The clock is running great but I am not sure how to proceed with allowing it to control some events. So to summarize, say I want relay #1 to turn on at 8am and then shutoff at 5pm.....any thoughts or libraries available to use to do something like this? Thanks, Gary

I was trying to set the timer frequency to 20MHz, however the code seemed to stop working at 125KHz, I was wondering if that’s the limit of the machine.Timer class

Hi, Is there a way to improve timers accuracy, e.g. 0.1 ms?... Thank you.

Good video but now a little out of date. Micropython has supported the Pi Pico hardware timers since version 1.8.5 and the current version is 1.20.0 You can still use the software timer you refer to in this video, but you define it as Timer(-1).

I suggest using micropython and asyncio. Rendering most timers useless

Be interesting to know what's going on under the hood with timers. And what happens if you have multiple timers that go at different times - what if one is in progress when another is ready? The documentation is... err... incomplete (polite) crap (factual)