The if() statement is the most basic of all programming control structures. It allows you to make something happen or not, depending on whether a given condition is true or not. It looks like this:
1if (someCondition) {2// do stuff if the condition is true3}
There is a common variation called if-else that looks like this:
1if (someCondition) {2// do stuff if the condition is true3} else {4// do stuff if the condition is false5}
There's also the else-if, where you can check a second condition if the first is false:
1if (someCondition) {2// do stuff if the condition is true3} else if (anotherCondition) {4// do stuff only if the first condition is false5// and the second condition is true6}
You'll use if statements all the time. The example below turns on an LED on pin 13 (the built-in LED on many Arduino boards) if the value read on an analog input goes above a certain threshold.
Arduino Board
Potentiometer or variable resistor
In the code below, a variable called
analogValue
is used to store the data collected from a potentiometer connected to the board on analogPin 0. This data is then compared to a threshold value. If the analog value is found to be above the set threshold the built-in LED connected to digital pin 13 is turned on. If analogValue is found to be <
(less than) threshold, the LED remains off.You can find more basic tutorials in the built-in examples section.
You can also explore the language reference, a detailed collection of the Arduino programming language.
Last revision 2015/07/29 by SM