Controlling time that the motors

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello everyone!!!! I'm a newbie here and I need some assistance. I'm trying to control the time that the 2 motors are on after reading a value provided by a load cell. In the code below I created random values from 7 to 15 (which are the values that I'm interested in the load cell once I put everything together). Once the system reads the value, the motor should activate for 1 second and the shut down until the next reading comes in, but I just cannot figure this out. Could someone help this poor ME that has no experience with coding? Thanks

#define enA 9
#define in1 4
#define in2 5
#define enB 10
#define in3 6
#define in4 7

unsigned long previousMillis = 0;

const long interval = 1000;

int motorSpeedA = 0;
int motorSpeedB = 0;


void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  pinMode(enA, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(enB, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(in1, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(in2, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(in3, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(in4, OUTPUT);
  
  randomSeed(analogRead(0));

}



void loop() {

unsigned long currentMillis = millis();

int weight=random(6,17);
Serial.println(weight);

if (currentMillis - previousMillis >= interval) {
  
  previousMillis = currentMillis;


  if (weight <= 11) {
  // Set Motor A forward
  digitalWrite(in1, LOW);
  digitalWrite(in2, HIGH);
  // Set Motor B forward
  digitalWrite(in3, LOW);
  digitalWrite(in4, HIGH);
  
  motorSpeedA = map(weight, 11, 6, 170, 255);
  motorSpeedB = map(weight, 11, 6, 170, 255);
  }

    else if (weight > 11) {
    // Set Motor A forward
    digitalWrite(in1, LOW);
    digitalWrite(in2, HIGH);
    // Set Motor B forward
    digitalWrite(in3, LOW);
    digitalWrite(in4, HIGH);

    motorSpeedA = map(weight, 16, 12, 0, 169);
    motorSpeedB = map(weight, 16, 12, 0, 169);
  }
  
  else {
  }
  
  // if (motorSpeedA < 70) {
  // motorSpeedA = 0;
  // }
  
 // if (motorSpeedB < 70) {
 // motorSpeedB = 0;
 // }
  
  analogWrite(enA, motorSpeedA); // Send PWM signal to motor A
  analogWrite(enB, motorSpeedB); // Send PWM signal to motor B

}
  delay (5000);

}
2

You have an interval of 1000 and delay() of 5000 - those won't work well. Get rid of the delay() and see what happens. Maybe make the interval longer for testing.

And you don't have any print statements to let you know what values the MAP() functions are giving you.

...R