I have made a super simple vehicle that reacts with light and chases it. I have a loop to control the car but I need it to run for a certain period of time, pause for a little bit, then repeat the loop. That way it won't constantly be chasing the light. I don't code in Arduino so my knowledge is minimal so any help with this would be greatly appreciated void setup() { pinMode(12, OUTPUT); pinMode(11, OUTPUT); Serial.begin(9600); // put your setup code here, to run once: } void loop() { int lightLeft = analogRead(A0); int lightRight = analogRead(A1); Serial.println(lightLeft); Serial.println(lightRight); if (lightLeft > lightRight+50) { digitalWrite(12, HIGH); digitalWrite(11, LOW); } else if (lightRight > lightLeft+50) { digitalWrite(11, HIGH); digitalWrite(12,LOW); } else{ digitalWrite(11, LOW); digitalWrite(12, LOW); } delay(300); // put your main code here, to run repeatedly: }

What is "x"? You can measure a "certain period of time" against millis(): millis() - Arduino Reference The Arduino programming language Reference, organized into Functions, Variable and Constant, and Structure keywords. [image] Using millis() for timing. A beginners guide Introductory Tutorials Part 1 It is not usually long before new Arduino users discover that although the delay() function is easy to use it has side effects, the main one of which is that its stops all activity on the Arduino until the delay is finished (not quite true, I know, but that is usually how the problem presents itself). When this occurs the new user is usually directed to the BlinkWithoutDelay example sketch (BWoD) and/or the excellent thread entitled Several things at the same time. Several things at the…

X being probably 5000ms - mostly so the vehicle will drive towards light for 5 seconds. Wait 5 seconds, then replete that. Thanks for the millis reference, I'll look into how that works!

You could think about your problem as "blink without delay" https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/BuiltInExamples/BlinkWithoutDelay with your code in one branch of the "if (ledState == LOW) " conditional and use "interval = 5000;" for your "x".

Struggling to make a loop run for x amount of time

Projects Interfacing w/ Software on the Computer

DaveX May 13, 2022, 12:51pm 2

What is "x"?
You can measure a "certain period of time" against millis():

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Struggling to make a loop run for x amount of time

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