Activity 6: Count and Control Repetitions

Many robotic tasks involve repeating an action over and over again.  Next, we’ll look at two options for repeating code: the for loop and while loop.  The for loop is commonly used for repeating a block of code a certain number of times.  The while loop is used to keep repeating a block of code as long as a condition is true.

A for Loop is for Counting

A for loop is typically used to make the statements in a code block repeat a certain number of times.  For example, your BOE Shield-Bot will use five different values to make a sensor detect distance, so it needs to repeat a certain code block five times.  For this task, we use a for loop.  Here is an example that uses a for loop to count from 1 to 10 and display the values in the Serial Monitor.

• Enter, save, and upload CountToTen.
• Open the Serial Monitor and verify that it counted from one to ten.

// Robotics with the BOE Shield - CountToTen

void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(9600);
 
  for(int i = 1; i <= 10; i++)
  {
    Serial.println(i);
    delay(500);
  }
  Serial.println("All done!");
}

void loop()
{
  // Empty, no repeating code.
}