input at different points in the program, rather than
pulsing the watchdog input high-low-high or low-high-
low. This technique avoids a stuck loop, in which the
watchdog timer would continue to be reset inside the
loop, keeping the watchdog from timing out.
Figure 6 shows an example of a flow diagram where
the I/O driving the watchdog input is set high at the
beginning of the program, set low at the beginning of
every subroutine or loop, then set high again when the
program returns to the beginning. If the program
should hang in any subroutine, the problem would
quickly be corrected, since the I/O is continually set low
and the watchdog timer is allowed to time out, causing
a reset or interrupt to be issued.
MAX6854/MAX6855/MAX6856/MAX6858/MAX6860–MAX6869
Nanopower µP Supervisory Circuits with
Manual Reset and Watchdog Timer
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