Keeping track
of the numbers
and counting has
been a fundamental
process in the
development of human
civilization. With progress,
the methods of
counting also advanced
and has now
exceeded the human
capacity. With industrial revolution, mechanical counters
were developed and
now in the
digital age, Digital Timer and
Counters are implemented
for use with
electronics.
Keeping track
of time is
important for almost
all the devices; as
such, most electronic devices
have a hardware
timer. With computers, a
hardware timer is
inbuilt. For additional purposes, software timers
are also maintained
based on the
fundamental hardware timer. Another type
of a special
timer is a watchdog timer, that
is used to
reset the corresponding
system, whenever a malfunction, fault or a system
hang is detected.
Digital Counters can
be defined as
sequential logic circuits
which use flip-flops
as the building
blocks. They are designed
to count the
number of a
specific event in
relation to a
clock signal. Counters can
be synchronous (data bits
change at the
same instant in
every flip-flop of
the counter) or
asynchronous (output from a
JK flip-flop is
used as the
clock of the
next flip-flop).
Difference:
It follows
that, a Digital
Timer is
an application of
the counters where
a certain signal
with a fixed
frequency is counted
to record time.
On the
other hand, a digital counter
is a device
that records the
number of occurrences
of a particular
event. Today, counters are based
on electronic devices
and are sequential
logic circuits that
record the number
of electric pulses
fed into the
counter.
A Digital timer
uses the frequency
of the internal
clock, generating delay;
while a
counter uses external
signal to count
pulses.
Unlike timers, counters do
not generate delays
but count the
internal time pulses
generated by micro-controller.
