STM32 HAL USART receive by interrupt

Question

I have some trouble to receive data over the USART. What I actually want to achieve ist, that I can receive a command over USART with no specific length (only a maximum possible length). So I use the interrupt routine to check each character received, but I somehow still cannot achieve what I want. The routine is called each time I receive a new character, but somehow HAL_UART_Receive_IT(&huart1,rx_data,buff_size_rx) does not upgrade in realtime, then I don't see the received character when I check rx_data[pointer], but a few time later it is in the rx_data buffer.

What I have so far:

int pointer =0;

...

void USART1_IRQHandler(void)
{
  /* USER CODE BEGIN USART1_IRQn 0 */
    if ( USART1->ISR & UART_IT_TXE) {

    }

    if ( USART1->ISR & UART_IT_RXNE) {
        HAL_UART_Receive_IT(&huart1,rx_data,buff_size_rx);
        if(rx_data[pointer]=='\0') {
              pointer=0;
              readCommand(rx_data);
              clearBuffer(rx_data,buff_size_rx);
        } else {
          pointer++;
          if(pointer>=buff_size_rx) {
              pointer=0;
          }
        }
    }
    /* USER CODE END USART1_IRQn 0 */
    HAL_UART_IRQHandler(&huart1);
    /* USER CODE BEGIN USART1_IRQn 1 */



  /* USER CODE END USART1_IRQn 1 */
}

Answer 1

HAL_UART_Receive_IT() is not meant to be called from an interrupt handler that way, but to initiate receiving a fixed number of bytes via interrupt.

A possible workaround is to check your input buffer after HAL_UART_IRQHandler() completes, i.e. in the /* USER CODE BEGIN USART1_IRQn 1 */ section. When a command is processed, you can reset pRxBuffPtr and RxXferCount in the handle structure to their original values to start from the start of the buffer again.

Another horrible possible workaround would be to call HAL_UART_Receive_IT() with a buffer size of 1, and set up a HAL_UART_RxCpltCallback() handler that checks the received byte each time, and calls HAL_UART_Receive_IT() again when necessary.

Of course you could do it without HAL, as PeterJ and others (always) suggest.

• You've already implemented pin and interrupt setup, leave them unchanged at first.
• Calculate the UART->BRR value according to the reference manual, or copy the relevant code from hal.
• set UART->CR1=USART_CR1_RE|USART_CR1_TE|USART_CR1_UE|USART_CR1_RXNEIE; Now, you are getting interrupts.
• In the interrupt function, read UART->SR into a temporary variable, and examine it.
• Read UART->DR when there is a received byte waiting, do the error handling otherwise (later).
• Get rid of the rest of the HAL calls when the above is working.

Interrupt response and processing time is often critical in embedded applications, and the HAL just wastes a lot of that.