PIM447 trackball: How to get a "clean" INT signal?

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Hello!

I wrote a driver for the PIM447 trackball in polling-mode, and now I’d like to rewrite it in interrupt-mode. Sadly, it turns out the INT signal toggles during I2C transactions (whatever the value of “INT_OUT” bit in REG_INT). See first capture below.

Also, even without touching the ball, the INT signal falls (which means new data are supposed to be available, which is not the case) a couple of milliseconds after registers are read, just as if the interruption was not cleared. See second capture below.

i2c-pim447
i2c-pim4471916×2040 217 KB

I took a look at the official driver, but despite having the “interrupt” keyword used here and there, it actually polls the INT signal; it doesn’t use it as a trigger (comments are mine):

while not trackball.get_interrupt():
    time.sleep(0.001)
[...]

def get_interrupt(self):
    if self._interrupt_pin is not None:
        return GPIO.input(self._interrupt_pin) == 0 # poll pin level
    else:                                           # or
        value = self.i2c_rdwr([REG_INT], 1)[0]      # poll register value
        return value & MSK_INT_TRIGGERED

In order to write an interrupt-mode driver I need a clean INT signal. Please, could you tell me:

  • how not to get the INT signal toggling during I2C transactions?

  • how not to get the INT signal falling even when no new data are available?

Thanks in advance,
cdc.