As many have said, when embarking on a project, it’s always the smallest details that kick your arse, and today, I’ve hit one of those.
A while back, still mourning the loss of the Intel Desktop Board line, I purchased a Jetway NF9E-Q77 as the Intel DQ77KB had become unobtainable, but this Jetway board, despite being sold as an industrial board, seems to be missing one of the most obvious features you’d expect from an industrial board: Auto power on. I’m rather baffled by this, further by the assertion of use for digital signage, if one of these ends up driving a large display high above the ground, does someone have to reach up to it with a long pole to press the power button every morning?
My first attempt at resolving this was to connect the +PWR_ON (power button) to the boards +5V supply (via a 4.7K resistor), this works good, because when the board is off, +5V is 0v, which is the same as pressing the power button, which just connects +PWR_ON to GND. As luck would have it, it powers on during the falling edge so it works a treat. Problem is – I couldn’t turn the darn thing off, because after shut down it goes right ahead and turns its self back on again, as you’d expect. Not exactly the behaviour I wanted.
Second bodge: This seems to be a common trick, attaching some kind of capacitor across the power switch. This works too. Most of the time…
Given that I want to be able to shut this machine down, and require that it always turns back on when AC power is connected, to heck with it, I’m going to have to use some kind of Microcontroller.
A while back I bought this little relic from a high street electronics retailer (Maplin). I went in there to buy the modern (and common) 12F675, but came out with a 12C508. Was it that they were out of 12F675’s, or perhaps they gave me the wrong part? I don’t know for sure, but I doubt it. Most likely is that my mind was harping back to the bygone era of EPROM PICs, and I really did ask for it.
I find it interesting that high street retailer sells something like this, because this line of PICs is really quite difficult to work with, and is the last thing that the average walk-in-off-the-street hobbyist would ever want to tangle with:
- It requires specialist kit to download code onto it, i.e the £1000+ MPLAB PM3, or a high voltage benchtop EPROM programmer
- It’s OTP (One Time Programmable) so unless you’ve got a whole tube of them (who does right?) there’s only one chance to get the code right
- It uses Microchips’ most basic 12-bit instruction set, for which, C compilers don’t support, so it’s got to be programmed with the dreaded PIC12 ASM language
So what am I going to do here? Cop out and use a 12F675, or conquer one of these once again. Not having written any ASM for many years, I can already see what should be a 1 hour task turning into a 6 hour curiosity project.
In order to make absolutely certain that the machine is turned on in all cases, I decided to make it work like this:
- +5v Standby voltage powers up PIC
- PIC waits 3 seconds
- PIC tests if machine is on (by sampling +5V main supply)
- If powered on, go to step 7
- If not, PIC presses power button for 500ms
- Go to step 2
- Do nothing until powered off and on again
The device would only need 4 connections:
- The +5V standby voltage, which pin 9 on an ATX power supply cable, failing that, most mainboards will have it available on at least one connector, in my case I found it on the CIR header.
- The main +5V. This is found just about anywhere, and is used only to test if the PC is on.
- The power on button active signal. This is either pin 8 or 6 on the front panel header, One of those two is connected to ground, ignore that one and connect the other to this device. It’s no problem to leave the physical power button connected, this device will not interfere with its operation.
- Ground. Take your pick where to connect this.
If using an Intel Desktop Board, or one that is designed to be compatible, the Custom Solutions Header has all four of these connections.
And here’s the source code (download project). Understanding that few would be equipped and comfortable attempting this on an OTP PIC, It also works on PIC12F675 when use12f675 is set to 1.
use12f675 equ 0 if use12f675 == 1 #include "p12f675.inc" processor 12f675 list f=inhx8m __config (_INTRC_OSC_NOCLKOUT & _MCLRE_ON & _WDT_OFF & _CP_OFF & _CPD_OFF & _BODEN_OFF) delay_ms_arg equ 0x20 delay_s_arg equ 0x21 add_arg equ 0x22 else #include "p12c508a.inc" processor 12c508a list f=inhx8m __config (_IntRC_OSC & _MCLRE_ON & _WDT_OFF & _CP_OFF) delay_ms_arg equ 0x07 delay_s_arg equ 0x08 add_arg equ 0x09 endif ; Start of code org 0x00 ; reset vector goto main delay_ms movf delay_ms_arg, f btfss STATUS, Z goto outer_loop retlw 0 outer_loop movlw 0xF9 movf add_arg, w inner_loop movlw 0xFF addwf add_arg, f btfss STATUS, Z goto inner_loop nop decfsz delay_ms_arg, F goto outer_loop retlw 0 delay_s movlw 0xFA movwf delay_ms_arg call delay_ms movlw 0xFA movwf delay_ms_arg call delay_ms movlw 0xFA movwf delay_ms_arg call delay_ms movlw 0xFA movwf delay_ms_arg call delay_ms decfsz delay_s_arg, f goto delay_s retlw 0 main movlw 0x00 movwf GPIO movlw 0x3D if use12f675 == 1 ; 12F675 bsf STATUS, RP0 ; select register bank 1 movwf TRISIO movlw 0x00 ; All A/D off movwf ANSEL bcf STATUS, RP0 ; select register bank 0 movlw 0x07 ; Comparators disconnected movwf CMCON else ; 12C508A tris GPIO endif main_loop ; Power button pressing loop movlw 0x03 ; 3 Seconds per pass movwf delay_s_arg call delay_s btfsc GPIO, 0 ; System now on? Exit if so goto infinite_loop bsf GPIO, 1 ; Assert power button movlw 0xFA ; 250ms delay movwf delay_ms_arg call delay_ms movlw 0xFA ; 250ms delay movwf delay_ms_arg call delay_ms bcf GPIO, 1 ; De assert power button goto main_loop infinite_loop ; Done till next power on goto infinite_loopPosted in Circuit snippets