ATmega48PA/88PA/168PA/328P
able. As long as the TWINT Flag is set, the SCL line is held low. This allows the application
software to complete its tasks before allowing the TWI transmission to continue.
The TWINT Flag is set in the following situations:
• After the TWI has transmitted a START/REPEATED START condition.
• After the TWI has transmitted SLA+R/W.
• After the TWI has transmitted an address byte.
• After the TWI has lost arbitration.
• After the TWI has been addressed by own slave address or general call.
• After the TWI has received a data byte.
• After a STOP or REPEATED START has been received while still addressed as a Slave.
• When a bus error has occurred due to an illegal START or STOP condition.
21.6 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 21-10 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.
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8161D–AVR–10/09
ATMEL [ ATMEL ]
