delayMicroseconds()

[Time]

Description

Pauses the program for the amount of time (in microseconds) specified by the parameter. There are a thousand microseconds in a millisecond and a million microseconds in a second.

Currently, the largest value that will produce an accurate delay is 16383; larger values can produce an extremely short delay. This could change in future Arduino releases. For delays longer than a few thousand microseconds, you should use delay() instead.

Syntax

delayMicroseconds(us)

Parameters

us: the number of microseconds to pause. Allowed data types: unsigned int.

Returns

Nothing

Example Code

The code configures pin number 8 to work as an output pin. It sends a train of pulses of approximately 100 microseconds period. The approximation is due to execution of the other instructions in the code.

int outPin = 8;               // digital pin 8

void setup() {
  pinMode(outPin, OUTPUT);    // sets the digital pin as output
}

void loop() {
  digitalWrite(outPin, HIGH); // sets the pin on
  delayMicroseconds(50);      // pauses for 50 microseconds
  digitalWrite(outPin, LOW);  // sets the pin off
  delayMicroseconds(50);      // pauses for 50 microseconds
}

Notes and Warnings

This function works very accurately in the range 3 microseconds and up to 16383. We cannot assure that delayMicroseconds will perform precisely for smaller delay-times. Larger delay times may actually delay for an extremely brief time.