Thread: Reading Individual bits from 2 bytes

Hi all,

I'm writing a piece of embedded software and I'm kinda stuck and wondered if anyone can point me in the right direction. I've been thinking for hours and hope that new eyes could see what tired eyes can't.

I'm reading in characters from the USB which is set up as a virtual COM port. I need the characters to represent one of 16 outputs from a serial-in-parallel-out shift register.

Anyway, I'm hardcoding the values I need into an array and then when the character comes in I subtract an offset and set ASCII '0' to element 0 of the array and then read a 16 bit word.

Code:

static unsigned int ASCII_Offsets[73] = {0x0000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0000, 0x0000,0x0000,
0x0000,0x0000,0x0000, 0x0000,0x0000,0x0000, 0x0000,0x1000,0x00F1,0x00810x0001,0x0030,0xFF00,0xFFFF,
0x0002,0xB482,0x0010,0x1800,0x7F00,0x8F00,0x0004,0x0011,
0x0080,0xA800,0x0100,0x0800,0x0008,0x1C00,0x00F0,
0x0020,0xE080,0xC080,0x0000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0000,0x1000,0x00F1,0x0081,0x0001,0x0030,0xFF00,0xFFFF,
0x0002,0xB482,0x0010,0x1800,0x7F00,0x8F00,0x0004,0x0011,
0x0080,0xA800,0x0100,0x0800,0x0008,0x1C00,0x00F0,
0x0020,0xE080,0xC080};  
// Don't worry about the numbers in the array and, sorry, I can see they are a little bit mucked up with the 
formatting. Also the 0x0000 terms are just ones that I haven't computed yet.

difference = ledval - 48;	//provides an offset and set ASCII '0' to element 0 of array.

motors = ASCII_Values[difference];	//gets the values for the required motors that need to be switched on for 
specific characters.

So far so good. I have the 16 bit hex number in the variable 'motors' but this is where I'm stumped.

I need to read each of the bits, of motors, individually so I can output them on a port pin.

Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

Thanks

This code gets each bit starting with the LSB.

Code:

int value = /* 16 bit value */
int mask = 1, i;

for(i = 0; i < 16; i++)
{
   if(value & mask)
      /* bit is set */
   else
      /* bit is not set */
   value = value >> 1;
}

Of course, a mask then shft right. How logical.

Cheers bithub.