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INSTRUMENTS
PCF8575C
www.ti.com
SCPS123F –MARCH 2005–REVISED JANUARY 2015
8 Detailed Description
8.1 Overview
The PCF8575C provides an open-drain interrupt (INT) output, which can be connected to the interrupt input of a
microcontroller. An interrupt is generated by any rising or falling edge of the port inputs in the input mode. After
time (tiv), the signal INT is valid. Resetting and reactivating the interrupt circuit is achieved when data on the port
is changed to the original setting, or data is read from or written to the port that generated the interrupt. Resetting
occurs in the read mode at the acknowledge (ACK) bit after the rising edge of the SCL signal or in the write
mode at the ACK bit after the falling edge of the SCL signal. Interrupts that occur during the ACK clock pulse can
be lost (or be very short), due to the resetting of the interrupt during this pulse. Each change of the I/Os after
resetting is detected and is transmitted as INT. Reading from or writing to another device does not affect the
interrupt circuit.
By sending an interrupt signal on this line, the remote I/O can inform the microcontroller if there is incoming data
on its ports, without having to communicate via the I2C bus. Thus, the PCF8575C can remain a simple slave
device.
Every data transmission to or from the PCF8575C must consist of an even number of bytes. The first data byte
in every pair refers to port 0 (P07–P00), and the second data byte in every pair refers to port 1 (P17–P10). To
write to the ports (output mode), the master first addresses the slave device, setting the last bit of the byte
containing the slave address to logic 0. The PCF8575C acknowledges and the master sends the first data byte
for P07–P00. After the first data byte is acknowledged by the PCF8575C, the second data byte (P17–P10) is
sent by the master. Once again, the PCF8575C acknowledges the receipt of the data, after which this 16-bit data
is presented on the port lines.
The number of data bytes that can be sent successively is not limited. After every two bytes, the previous data is
overwritten. When the PCF8575C receives the pairs of data bytes, the first byte is referred to as P07–P00 and
the second byte as P17–P10. The third byte is referred to as P07–P00, the fourth byte as P17–P10, and so on.
Before reading from the PCF8575C, all ports desired as input should be set to logic 1. To read from the ports
(input mode), the master first addresses the slave device, setting the last bit of the byte containing the slave
address to logic 1. The data bytes that follow on the SDA are the values on the ports. If the data on the input port
changes faster than the master can read, this data may be lost.
When power is applied to VCC, an internal power-on reset holds the PCF8575C in a reset state until VCC has
reached VPOR. At that time, the reset condition is released, and the device I2C-bus state machine initializes the
bus to its default state.
The hardware pins (A0, A1, and A2) are used to program and vary the fixed I2C address, and allow up to eight
devices to share the same I2C bus or SMBus. The fixed I2C address of the PCF8575C is the same as the
PCF8575, PCF8574, PCA9535, and PCA9555, allowing up to eight of these devices, in any combination, to
share the same I2C bus or SMBus.
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