TWI (Slave) Address
Register – TWAR
Bit
7
TWA6
R/W
1
6
TWA5
R/W
1
5
TWA4
R/W
1
4
TWA3
R/W
1
3
TWA2
R/W
1
2
TWA1
R/W
1
1
TWA0
R/W
1
0
TWGCE
R/W
0
TWAR
Read/Write
Initial Value
The TWAR should be loaded with the 7-bit Slave address (in the seven most significant bits of
TWAR) to which the TWI will respond when programmed as a Slave Transmitter or Receiver,
and not needed in the Master modes. In multimaster systems, TWAR must be set in masters
which can be addressed as Slaves by other Masters.
The LSB of TWAR is used to enable recognition of the general call address (0x00). There is an
associated address comparator that looks for the slave address (or general call address if
enabled) in the received serial address. If a match is found, an interrupt request is generated.
• Bits 7..1 – TWA: TWI (Slave) Address Register
These seven bits constitute the slave address of the TWI unit.
• Bit 0 – TWGCE: TWI General Call Recognition Enable Bit
If set, this bit enables the recognition of a General Call given over the Two-wire Serial Bus.
Using the TWI
The AVR TWI is byte-oriented and interrupt based. Interrupts are issued after all bus events, like
reception of a byte or transmission of a START condition. Because the TWI is interrupt-based,
the application software is free to carry on other operations during a TWI byte transfer. Note that
the TWI Interrupt Enable (TWIE) bit in TWCR together with the Global Interrupt Enable bit in
SREG allow the application to decide whether or not assertion of the TWINT Flag should gener-
ate an interrupt request. If the TWIE bit is cleared, the application must poll the TWINT Flag in
order to detect actions on the TWI bus.
When the TWINT Flag is asserted, the TWI has finished an operation and awaits application
response. In this case, the TWI Status Register (TWSR) contains a value indicating the current
state of the TWI bus. The application software can then decide how the TWI should behave in
the next TWI bus cycle by manipulating the TWCR and TWDR Registers.
Figure 77 is a simple example of how the application can interface to the TWI hardware. In this
example, a Master wishes to transmit a single data byte to a Slave. This description is quite
abstract, a more detailed explanation follows later in this section. A simple code example imple-
menting the desired behavior is also presented.
174
ATmega8(L)
2486T–AVR–05/08
ATMEL [ ATMEL ]
