USART Interrupt + Pause

I know first hand that placing the Pause command in any code causes the interrupt service to not respond during the pause.

The problem I have is in a number of places in my code I want to stop to do something for say 500ms. For example an LED would light for 500ms or a timeout in a sub would occur after 30 seconds.

I'm left scratching my head on how to do this. Although pause is easy and works because this device is a node I want the host PC to be able to communicate with it whenever it wants.

Am I expect too much? What would be a good approach?

For immediate response to interrupts - use assembler interrupts.

For BASIC interrupts with a faster interrupt response time, break down
your pause times into smaller increments in a loop.

Instead of PAUSE 500 ' <-- 500mS delay before interrupt service

X VAR WORD

FOR X = 1 to 20000 ' ~500mS total
PAUSEUS 25 ' <-- 25uS delay before interrupt service
NEXT X

Just take into account that the time spent in your interrupt handler will add
to the overall time delay in your loop if the interrupt happens while in a delay
loop.

I want to stay out of ASM as much as possible That is, after all, the reason I use PicBasic and not ASM.

I had contemplated using shorter and more frequent Pause times. I will go that route. The actual times are not huge in this case, they just need to be close enough.

Thanks Bruce!