Arduino Timer Tutorial - What are timers & how to use them in Arduino

What is TIMER in Embedded Electronics?
Timer is kind of interrupt. It is like a simple clock which can measure time interval of an event. Every microcontroller has a clock (oscillator), say in Arduino Uno it is 16Mhz. This is responsible for speed. Higher the clock frequency higher will be the processing speed. A timer uses counter which counts at certain speed depending upon the clock frequency. In Arduino Uno it takes 1/16000000 seconds or 62nano seconds to make a single count. Meaning Arduino moves from one instruction to another instruction for every 62 nano second.

Timers in Arduino UNO:
In Arduino UNO there are three timers used for different functions.
Timer0: It is an 8-Bit timer and used in timer function such as delay(), millis().
Timer1: It is a 16-Bit timer and used in servo library.
Timer2: It is an 8-Bit Timer and used in tone() function.

[crieliocriel]

can we make the timer like turn on and of in a specific time, in hours? I am talking about turn on for 12 hours and then off for 12 hours.

[rksre-mark]

Bro can we do it for blink every one hour

[kunalpandhram]

hello sir could you please share code for Daily Schedule Timer ON-OFF Using RTC Module with Memory Backup If Power Cuts?

[riteshchauhan]

Library used while working with timer/counters??

[kampung]

Hi, just want to ask, why must choose 1024 prescaler? Can I choose 256 to get 1 second overflow interrupt?

[fakemayham]

i just wanted a timer not a fucking math problem