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Flag variables are great, and totally not evil, when you just have two states: ON or OFF. What about when you have multiple states? Is there an option better than creating multiple flag variables?

The C-language has a declaration type just for this purpose. It is called an enumeration, or enum.

Setting up a state machine with enum is a surprisingly simple. Arduino and embedded programmers should use them!

All you need to do is create descriptive tag names, and let the compiler assign them an integer value. Unlike a #define which is just a macro replacement, the compiler treats an enum as your personal variable type.

This behavior comes in handy when you’re creating states for a state machine. I show how to create a simple state machine with enum, to blink an LED with millis(), in this post.

How to blink (or flash) a LED without delay() and detect button pushes

One of the limitations of the delay() function is that nothing else can really be done. This presents a problem when you want to flash a LED while waiting for a pushbutton to be pressed.

Flashing the LED with millis() and using a flag variable to find if the LED should be flashing solves this problem.

Consider this another example to my virtual millis() cookbook.

This code (below) should work with both Arduino (AVR) and Energia (supported boards), but to be honest, I haven’t had a chance to test it on my MSP430 yet.