Understanding WDTs

WDTs are one of the unsung heroes of embedded systems. They quietly monitor the system’s health, ensuring it can recover gracefully from unexpected hitches. Imagine them as vigilant guards, always on the lookout for system malfunctions, ready to reset the microcontroller if something goes wrong. In this section, we’ll explore what WDTs are and how they function, and dive into some common use cases to illustrate their importance.

What are WDTs?

WDTs are like guardians for your microcontroller. Imagine you’re using a device, and something goes wrong—a bug in the developer’s code causes an infinite loop, or a hardware glitch freezes the system. Without a watchdog, your device would be stuck, potentially causing significant problems, especially in critical applications such as medical devices or automotive systems.

A WDT is a hardware or software timer that resets the system if the main program fails to reset the timer before...