Using Timer 1 as an event counter to count a 1 Hz pulse

8051 timers have dual functionality. When they are activated by the clock oscillator, they act as timers. However, they can also be activated by the signal pulse on the external pins, that is, P3.4 (Timer 0) and P3.5 (Timer 1), acting as counters.

In this recipe, we will learn how to program Timer 1 so that it counts the activations of the P3.5 pin of the 8051 processor.

How to do it...

Follow these steps to complete this recipe:

1. Open mcu8051ide.
2. Create a new project called Counters.
3. Create a new file called generator.c and put the following code snippet into it. This increments a counter variable each time a timer interrupt is triggered:

#include<8051.h> 

volatile...