Comparing button presses to correct sequence

Question

I am creating a memory game with the Arduino. It has four buttons, each for a different colored led. The leds will blink in a random sequence and either fail or add another light in the next sequence if the user presses the correct buttons. I have also attached an lcd screen to late implement a score tally.

Right now, the welcome lights display and the sound is working fine, but when the sequence starts, it will act as though I am pressing a button and proceed through the fail light method. I think the last method is causing this issue where I am comparing the button pressed to the sequence.

I would appreciate any help!

This is essentially my wiring just with different pins chosen: enter image description here

• Mark Smith: What have you done to try to understand the problem? Put some debug prints in, see where it's going wrong.
• Katie: I have outputted the button states as well as the button state right before it checks the sequence along with the seq. In the serial monitor it will say button3 = 1 when I have not pressed any buttons since the start of the program.
• Juraj: the buttons in schema have pull-down resistors
• Katie: That was one of the things I was thinking could be wrong since I declare the pinModes with INPUT_PULLUP. Should I instead just use INPUT? Or would it be more efficient to not have the pull down resistors?

Answer 1

I found that I did not need the pull down resistors for each button since I had declared the pinMode for each button to be INPUT_PULLUP. So instead of the schematic above, I took out the resistors for the buttons and instead wired one side of the buttons to ground.

Answer 2

The problem might be that you do not debounce the buttons. When you press a button, there is somehwere between fully pressed and not pressed (or backwards) a state there it 'bounces', e.g. you get lots of state transitions, resulting in seeing a button pressed twice or many times instead of once.

Check the debounce example in the default Arduino Tutorial

• Katie: Thank you. I don't even press any buttons though, and it does this.
• Michel Keijzers: Check the variable button just before FailLight, is it -1 (expected) or has it a button (press) value?
• Katie: the button value is 0 before the fail light
• Michel Keijzers: Are you sure that if(button0 == LOW){ should be LOW and not HIGH?
• Katie: well for the pinMode of the buttons, i set them to INPUT_PULLUP so doesn't that make the states opposite? (HIGH when not pressed and LOW when pressed)