Is my sketch 'thread safe'?

Question

I come from a .Net background, typically I would 'lock' operations on an integer when I have thread-safe requirements. I'm not sure that applies to my sketch here? Could I potentially bypass an increment from one of my interrupt pins?

In summary, I have 2 interrupt pins - I want to increment a count which (every 5 seconds) writes via serial and resets.

I'm doing this to, kind of, avoid writing serial from within an interrupt - since I've read it's strongly discouraged.

#include <Controllino.h>

const byte interruptPin0 = CONTROLLINO_IN0;
const byte interruptPin1 = CONTROLLINO_IN1;
int counter1 = 0;
int counter2 = 0;
unsigned long previousMillis = 0;
unsigned long interval = 5000;
int a = 60;
char buffer[256];

void setup()
{
  pinMode(interruptPin0, INPUT_PULLUP);
  pinMode(interruptPin1, INPUT_PULLUP);
  attachInterrupt(digitalPinToInterrupt(interruptPin0), pin1Fired, RISING);
  attachInterrupt(digitalPinToInterrupt(interruptPin1), pin2Fired, RISING);
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop()
{
  unsigned long currentMillis = millis();
  if (currentMillis - previousMillis > interval) {
    previousMillis = currentMillis;
    sprintf(buffer,"A%d",counter1);
    Serial.println(buffer);
    sprintf(buffer,"D%d",counter2);
    Serial.println(buffer);
    counter1 = counter2 = 0;
  }
}

void pin1Fired()
{
  counter1++;
}

void pin2Fired()
{
  counter2++;
}

Answer 1

There is indeed a race condition in your code: if an interrupt fires while you are reading one of the counters, you might read garbage. If it fires between reading and resetting the counter, you loose one count.

The way to prevent the race is to block interrupts while the main thread (everything that does not run in interrupt context) accesses the counters. BTW, do not forget to make the counters volatile.

The portions of the code that run with interrupts disabled are called “critical sections”, and you should keep them as short as possible in order to limit the interrupt latency they introduce. Typically, within those critical sections you do nothing more than access the shared variables. Example:

void loop()
{
  unsigned long currentMillis = millis();
  if (currentMillis - previousMillis > interval) {
    previousMillis = currentMillis;
    noInterrupts();  // start of critical section
    int counter1Copy = counter1;
    counter1 = 0;
    interrupts();  // end of critical section
    Serial.print("A");
    Serial.println(counter1Copy);
    noInterrupts();  // start of critical section
    int counter2Copy = counter2;
    counter2 = 0;
    interrupts();  // end of critical section
    Serial.print("D");
    Serial.println(counter2Copy);
  }
}