How accurate does the 300 seconds have to be? If you can tolerate some variation, I would consider using the watchdog timer. You will have to calibrate the watchdog on a periodic basis - this is easily done by setting the watchdog to no pre-scaler, running the PIC, then timing how long it for the watchdog to trigger. Use that measured time as the basis for setting how many watchdog timeouts you need to achieve 300 seconds. ... This will be highly temperature dependent. Bob Ammerman RAm Systems -- http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: [PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads