pTask - priority (out of order) task manager (edit)

mbradley · Joined: 11 Jul 2009 Posts: 118 Location: California, USA

Hi everyone,

I wrote this to solve a few issues, and have been using it for about a month now, and all seems to work well. I also wrapped this up all in macros so it is nice and small and clean.

What it does, is allow you to group several tasks together, and have each one run more often than others.

Lets say you have a task that checks a button, well, you might not want to run that task every ms, so it can run with a larger number, thus run less often. What about a task that checks the size of a serial buffer, you might want to run that every iteration, so a number of 1.

Ok, its easier than it sounds, take a look at the code below

EDIT: forgot to show while forever loop, its now added

MikeW · Joined: 15 Sep 2003 Posts: 184 Location: Warrington UK

Since no one else has commented.

I would like to say that this looks really useful, and is very elegant.

Mike

mbradley · Joined: 11 Jul 2009 Posts: 118 Location: California, USA

Thank you very much.

I have found that I use it alot in LCD display applications, where I dont want to update the LCD so often that it just blinks and flashes. I rather use that time to process other items.

I generaly use a 200 or so for the lcd tasks.
_________________
Michael Bradley
www.mculabs.com
Open Drivers and Projects

MikeW · Joined: 15 Sep 2003 Posts: 184 Location: Warrington UK

Michael,

I usually have a 1msec or 10 msec timer interrupt, and then set flags for different times, so

in the interrrupt routine have

100mSec flag
200msec flag
500 msec flag
1 second flag
etc etc.

Then in the main loop test the flag, and go off and run the function required.

Your approach looks better.

Question, if I have several functions, which I want to run say every 1 tick, but have them run sequentially on the next tick, could you modify your solution for me.

example,
functionA
functionB
functionC

That I want to run say every 5 ticks.

So that after 5 ticks, functionA runs, then 5+1 ticks later functionB runs, then after 5+2 ticks, functionC runs.

I appreciate I could have a loop counter in the task_procTarget() in your example. mpTask(mainTasks, 5, task_procTarget()

Any thoughts ?

Mike

mbradley · Joined: 11 Jul 2009 Posts: 118 Location: California, USA

Hi Mike,

In general I try to save my timers and interrupts, I use them alot for timmings, so I try not to use them becouse I never seem to have enough of them.

I do have another set of macros for doing just what you ask. That is, a "in order" processing of a list of functions. called slice.

I had written it before pTask, but I needed more flexability, so today, I actualy use several pTasks and slices in an application.

So, as you said, mpTask(mainTasks, 5, task_procTarget() );

take task_procTarget(), and put a slice manager in it, then it would function as you asked.