I just got my Arduino Uno for Christmas, and I went through this starter kit guide book by Vilros that came with the kit, it did a great job of explaining the circuit board and giving me cool idea, however, it did not really give me good insight on the code. I am looking to learn about the code but can't seem to find a great general tutorial. I have been looking trying to understand the syntax and it seems to make sense but I need to find a way to apply it, any ideas? Is there a good tutorial that I'm missing?
Also, I have been searching around to figure out what the 'Void' function does. Can someone please explain that to me? I think part of the confusion for it is that it does not appear to have anything to do with the English word, 'Void,' what word should I call it?
In void setup() and void loop(), the void part just means that the function setup or loop don't return anything, ie sends no result back. On the other hand, if you wrote your own function to read a sensor, it would almost certainly need to give an answer, as in "return" one, say an integer. Then you would have, say int readMySensor()
Teddy1:
Also, I have been searching around to figure out what the 'Void' function does. Can someone please explain that to me? I think part of the confusion for it is that it does not appear to have anything to do with the English word, 'Void,' what word should I call it?
Thanks in advance!
Void is not a function. It's a keyword telling the compiler that a function for example does not return a value when it's done. It means exactly what it does in english. Variables can under certain conditions be void type, but that's something for the bit more seasoned programmer.
Oh okay, that kind of makes some sense. In looking at the other 'Data Types' I'm going to assume that I will probably only use 'void' and 'int' for the most part? Until, of course I start getting in the more in-depth things, right?
It depends entirely on what the function you write, needs to do. If it calculates the area of a circle it would need to be say a float, as in float calcCircleArea(rad), where the rad means you need to feed it the radius.
As a side note, the empty brackets on the end of setup() and loop() are actually implied voids too: no argument is passed to those functions, as if they were written void setup(void) and void loop(void).