Like I said, I'm kinda new to programming,
Here's a link to the Shifty Vu
http://docs.macetech.com/doku.php/shifty_vu_shield
The Shifty Vu puts an output into sensor pin 2 and 3.
I'm not sure what data loss is, but I originally used the millis to as an interval for when the chip would read the input from sensor pin 2. I got kinda lazy and started using the delay function after a while.
I didn't know about the serial.print. I'll give that a try.