RTC Interfacing and

Programming

Introduction of Real Time Clock

The

real-time clock (RTC) is a widely used

device that provides accurate time and date
for many applications
Many systems such as the x86 IBM PC come
with such a chip on the motherboard
The RTC chip in the IBM PC provides time
components of hour, minute, and second, in
addition to the date/calendar components of
year, month, and day

Introduction of Real Time Clock

The

RTC chip uses an internal battery, which

keeps the time and date even when the
power is off
One of the most widely used RTC chips is
the DS 12887 from Dallas Semiconductor
/Maxim Corp
It uses an internal lithium battery to keep
operating for over 10 years in the absence of
external power

Introduction of Real Time Clock

According to the DS 12887 data sheet from
Maxim, it keeps track of seconds, minutes,
hours, days, day of week, date, month, and
year with leap-year compensation valid up to
year 2100
The above information is provided in both
binary (hex) and BCD formats. The DS
12887 supports both 12-hour and 24-hour
clock modes with AM and PM in the 12-hour
mode

Introduction of Real Time Clock

It

also supports the Daylight Savings Time

option
The DS 12887 uses CMOS technology to
keep the power consumption low and it has
the designation DS12C887, where C is for
CMOS
The DS12887 has a total of 128 bytes of
nonvolatile RAM
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Introduction of Real Time Clock

It

uses 14 bytes of RAM for clock/calendar

and control registers, and the other 114 bytes
of RAM are for general-purpose data storage
In the x86 IBM PC, these 114 bytes of NVRAM are used for the CMOS configuration,
where the system setups are kept before the
operating system takes over
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Pin Diagram of DS12887 RTC

Address map of the DS12887

Address map of the DS12887

The

DS12887 has a total of 128 bytes of

RAM space with addresses 00 -7FH
The first ten locations, 00 09, are set aside
for RTC values of time, calendar, and alarm
data
The next four bytes are used for the control
and status registers
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Address map of the DS12887

They

are registers A, B, C, and D and are

located at addresses 10-13 (OA OD in hex)
The next 114 bytes from addresses OEH to
7FH are available for data storage
The entire 128 bytes of RAM are accessible
directly for read or write except the following:

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Registers C and D are read-only

D7 bit of register A is read-only
The high-order bit of the seconds byte is readonly

DS12887 Address Location for

Time, Calendar, and Alarm

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Interfacing of DS12887 with 8051

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Turning on the oscillator for the

first time
The

DS12887 is equipped with the internal

oscillator which is turned off in order to save
the lithium battery.
We need to turn on the oscillator before we
use the time keeping features of the DS
12887
To do that, bits D6 D4 of register A must be
set to value 010
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Register A Bits for Turning on the

DS12887s Oscillator

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Code for turning ON DS12887

ACALL

DELAY_200MS ;Giving settling time

MOV R0,#0AH ; Reg A address of DS12887
MOV A,#20H ; 010 DATA FOR D6-D4
MOVX @R0,A

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Bits of Register B

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Register C

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IRQF =1: if PF = PIE= 1 orAF=AIE= 1 orUF =

UIE= 1
PF Periodic interrupt flag. Periodic interrupts can
be generated at a rate of once every 500 ms to
once every 122 us. The rate is set by bits RS3
RSO of register A

Register C
AF

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Alarm interrupt flag. The AF becomes 1

when the current real time matches the alarm
time. AF and AIE of register B together (if
both are 1) will allow the IRQ to be
asserted low when all the three bytes of the
real time (yy:mm:dd) are the same as the
bytes in the alarm time
The AF also becomes 1 for cases of once
per second, once per minute, and once per
hour alarm

ALARM AND SQW FEATURES OF

THE DS12887 CHIP
The SQW pin
provides us a
square wave
output of various
frequencies
The frequency is
chosen by bits
RSO RS3 of
register A

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ALARM AND SQW FEATURES OF

THE DS12887 CHIP
Also

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enable SQWE bit in Register B

ALARM FEATURE OF DS12887

CHIP
The

alarm interrupt can be programmed to

occur at rates of

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(a) once per day

(b) once per hour
(c) once per minute
(d) once per second

Once-per-day alarm
To program

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the alarm for once per day, we

write the desired time for the alarm into the
hour, minute, and second RAM locations 1,
3, and 5
As the clock keeps the time, when all three
bytes of hour, minute, and second for the real
time clock match the values in the alarm
hour, minute, and second, the AF (alarm flag)
bit in register C of the DS 12887 will go high

Once-per-hour, minute and second

alarms
To program

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the alarm for once per hour, we

write value FFH into the alarm hour location
of 5 only
To program the alarm for once per minute,
we write value FFH into both the alarm hour
and alarm minute locations of 5 and 3
To program the alarm for once per second,
we write value FFH into all three locations of
alarm hour, alarm minute, and alarm second

IRQ FEATURE OF THE DS12887

CHIP
We

can poll the AF bit in register C, which is

a waste of microcontroller resources, or allow
the IRQ pin to be activated upon matching
the alarm time with the real time
It must be noted that in order to use the IRQ
pin of the DS 12887 for an alarm, the
interrupt-enable bit for alarm in register B
(AIE) must be set high
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IRQ FEATURE OF THE DS12887

CHIP

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IRQ FEATURE OF THE DS12887

CHIP
Interrupt

request (IRQ) is an output pin for

the DS12887 RTC chip
There are three possible sources that can
activate the IRQ pin

(a) alarm interrupt

(b) periodic pulse interrupt
(c) update interrupt

We

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can choose which source to activate the

IRQ pin using the interrupt-enable bit in
register B of the DS 12887

PERIODIC INTERRUPT
The

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second source of interrupt is the periodic

interrupt flag (PF)
The periodic interrupt flag is part of register C
It will go high at a rate set by the RS3 -RSO
bits of register A
This rate can be from once every 500 ms to
once every 122 us as shown
The PF becomes 1 when an edge is detected
for the period

PERIODIC INTERRUPT
Just

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like alarm interrupt, the periodic interrupt

can also be directed to the IRQ pin
To use IRQ, the interrupt-enable bits of PIE in
register B must be set to 1
In other words, we can poll the PF bit of
register C, which is a waste of the
microcontrollers resources, or it can be
directed to the hardware IRQ pin
If we set PIE = 1, the IRQ pin is asserted low
when PF goes high

PERIODIC INTERRUPT
While

the alarm interrupt gave us the options

from once per day to once per second, the
periodic interrupt gives us the option of
subsecond interrupts
For example, we can write a program to send
a message to the screen twice per second (2
Hz)
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Internal
Architecture
of DS12887

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