Spaceship Interface – Cassie Carl

This project follows the Spaceship Interface tutorial from the Arduino projects book. I chose to type out the code manually to better understand the language and to prepare me to better troubleshoot in the future.

I did make a small modification to the code Arduino provides. I created a new variable for the delay time. I wanted to modify Arduino’s recommendation of 250ms to see the lights blink faster, but I didn’t want to edit it in both places every time. So I defined the variable in line 2, and the delays reference that variable rather than a hard coded integer. It’s a small change that lets me edit the delays on the fly.

Here’s my final code:

int switchState = 0;
int delayTime = 100;

void setup (){
  pinMode (3, OUTPUT); // green LED
  pinMode (4, OUTPUT); // red LED
  pinMode (5, OUTPUT); // red LED
  pinMode (2, INPUT); // switch
}

void loop(){
  switchState = digitalRead(2); // check voltage on pin 2 (switch)

  if (switchState == LOW) {
    // if the button is not pressed
    digitalWrite (3, HIGH); // turn on green LED
    digitalWrite (4, LOW); // turn off red LED
    digitalWrite (5, LOW); // turn off red LED
  }

  else {
    // if the button is pressed
    digitalWrite (3, LOW); // turn off green LED
    digitalWrite (4, LOW); // turn off first red LED
    digitalWrite (5, HIGH); // turn on second red LED

    delay(delayTime); // wait
      // toggle the LEDs
      digitalWrite (4, HIGH); // turn on first red LED
      digitalWrite (5, LOW); // turn off second red LED
    delay(delayTime); // wait
  }
}

I would give myself an A for this project because I successfully completed the tutorial and made an original customization to the code.

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