How to cast float into four bytes?

Question

I'm trying to save GPS coordinates to an EEPROM.

In this example I feed it the latitude of 56060066 as the argument float x

void writeFloat(unsigned int addr, float x)
{
  byte seriesOfBytes[3];
  *((float *)seriesOfBytes) = x;
  // Write all four bytes.
  for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++)
  {
    i2c_eeprom_write_byte(0x57, addr, myFloat.bytes[i]); // Write byte to EEPROM
    Serial.println(seriesOfBytes[i],BIN);  // Debug line
  }
}

I'm expecting to receive the following four bytes from the serial print:

00000011
01010111
01101000
10100010

Instead I'm getting these:

00101000
11011010
01010101
01001100

I've tried changing all sorts of parameters, but can't seem to find the problem. Can anyone spot the issue?

Answer 1

If you were to enable the display of warnings you would most likely see it complain about "dereferencing type-punned pointer will break strict-aliasing rules" which is what you are doing here.

Basically you are trying to cast an array of four 8-bit values which can have any alignment they like (byte alignment) to a 32-bit float value which needs 4-byte alignment. And the two just don't mesh.

Instead you need to work the other way around - cast a type that has smaller alignment requirements over the type that has larger requirements.

So instead of getting 4 bytes and trying to fill them as a float you get a float and read it as 4 bytes:

byte *b = (byte *)&floatVal;

Then you can access b[0] to b[3] quite happily.

Another way to do it is with a union:

union {
    float fval;
    byte bval[4];
} floatAsBytes;

floatAsBytes.fval = floatVal;
EEPROM.write(0, floatAsBytes.bval[0]);
EEPROM.write(1, floatAsBytes.bval[1]);
EEPROM.write(2, floatAsBytes.bval[2]);
EEPROM.write(3, floatAsBytes.bval[3]);

Also, in your code, you only allocated enough room for 3 bytes, not 4...

Answer 2

You are getting exactly what you said you want. 4 bytes representing the number in float format.

What you are expecting to get, is 4 bytes representing the number in big-endian integer format.

Using Majenkos solution for casting, you need to change the types and reverse the for loop for big-endinaness.
I also used int32_t because the size of the int is 16-bit (2-byte) on the Arduino Uno (and other ATMega based boards) and on the Arduino Due it's 32-bit (4-byte). Its better to define the exact int in this case.

union {
    int32_t ival;
    byte bval[4];
} int32AsBytes;

void writeInt32(unsigned int addr, int32_t x)
{
    int32AsBytes.ival = x;
    for(int i = 3; i >= 0; i--) // reverse for big-endian
    {
        i2c_eeprom_write_byte(0x57, addr, myFloat.bytes[i]); // Write byte to EEPROM
        Serial.println(int32AsBytes.bval[i], BIN);  // Debug line
    }
}

Answer 3

This mucking around with casts and arrays is far too complex.

See: Reading and Writing Data Structures to EEPROM

The library EEPROMAnything.h will accomplish this.

---

EEPROMAnything.h

The library just consists of this file. Save into your "libraries" folder under the folder name EEPROMAnything.

#include <Arduino.h>  // for type definitions
#include <EEPROM.h>

template <typename T> unsigned int EEPROM_writeAnything (int ee, const T& value)
{
    const byte* p = (const byte*)&value;
    unsigned int i;
    for (i = 0; i < sizeof(value); i++)
        EEPROM.write(ee++, *p++);
    return i;
}

template <typename T> unsigned int EEPROM_readAnything (int ee, T& value)
{
    byte* p = (byte*)&value;
    unsigned int i;
    for (i = 0; i < sizeof(value); i++)
        *p++ = EEPROM.read(ee++);
    return i;
}

---

Example code

#include <EEPROM.h>
#include <EEPROMAnything.h>

void setup ()
  {
  Serial.begin (115200);
  Serial.println ();
  float foo = 56060066;
  EEPROM_writeAnything (0, foo);

  float bar;
  EEPROM_readAnything (0, bar);

  Serial.println (bar);
  }  // end of setup

void loop ()
  {
  }  // end of loop

---

Output from above

56060064.00

Note you don't get exactly the same number back. This is because of the precision of 4-bytes floats.

---

After re-reading the question I see you are using I2C EEPROM. That changes the answer a bit, but you can see an adaptation of that library for I2C here. The general idea is the same though.

---

i2c_eeprom_write_byte(0x57, addr, myFloat.bytes[i]); // Write byte to EEPROM

Your code seems to be writing all of the bytes to the same address, I don't know how that could work.

Answer 4

union Float {
    float    m_float;
    uint8_t  m_bytes[sizeof(float)];
};

float        pi,pi1;
uint8_t      bytes[sizeof(float)];
uint8_t      bytes1[sizeof(float)];
Float        myFloat;


#include <Wire.h>    
#define disk1 0x50    //Address of 24LC256 eeprom chip 
void setup(void)
{
  unsigned int address = 0;
  Serial.begin(9600);
  Wire.begin();
  pi = 300.78;
  Serial.println("*******************************************");
  Serial.println("pi = "+ String(pi));
  Serial.println("***** Conversion by using type casting *****");
  *(float*)(bytes) = pi; 
  for(int i=0;i<4;i++) Serial.println( bytes[i]);
  Serial.println("*******************************************");
  for( int i=0;i<4;i++){
      writeEEPROM(disk1, address, bytes[i]);
      address=address+sizeof(bytes[i]);
  }
   address=0;
   for( int i=0;i<4;i++){
      bytes1[i]=(readEEPROM(disk1, address));
      address++;
      Serial.println(bytes1[i]);
   }
   Serial.println("************Conver Byte to Float*************************");
 pi1 = *(float*)(bytes1); 
 Serial.println("pi = "+String( pi1)); 
 Serial.println("********* Conversion by using union *********");
 myFloat.m_float = pi1;   // assign a float to union
 Serial.println("myFloat.m_Float = "+String( myFloat.m_float));
 Serial.println("myFloat.m_Bytes = "+String(myFloat.m_bytes[0])+String(myFloat.m_bytes[1])+String(myFloat.m_bytes[2])+String(myFloat.m_bytes[3]));  // get the bytes   
}
void loop(){}
void writeEEPROM(int deviceaddress, unsigned int eeaddress, byte data ) 
{
  Wire.beginTransmission(deviceaddress);
  Wire.write((int)(eeaddress >> 8));   // MSB
  Wire.write((int)(eeaddress & 0xFF)); // LSB  Wire.send(data);
  Wire.write(data);
  Wire.endTransmission();
  delay(5);
}

byte readEEPROM(int deviceaddress, unsigned int eeaddress ) 
{