Arduino loop over a function is always displaying 0 as final values

Question

I trying to loop over a function in arduino to get values for 2000 times, and then divide it by 2000 to get an average offset:

int16_t x_offset = 0;
int16_t y_offset = 0;
int16_t z_offset = 0;

And inside setup():

for(int i=0; i<2000;i++)
  {
    GetXYZ(x_offset, y_offset, z_offset);
    x_offset += x_offset;
    y_offset += y_offset;
    z_offset += z_offset; 
    Serial.println(x_offset);
    delay(3);
  }
  x_offset /= 2000;
  y_offset /= 2000;
  z_offset /= 2000;
  Serial.println(x_offset);Serial.println("...");Serial.println(y_offset);Serial.println("...");
Serial.println(z_offset);Serial.println("...");

Here is the GetXYZ() function:

void GetXYZ( int16_t &x, int16_t &y, int16_t &z) {
  // Get the gyro values
  Wire.beginTransmission(MPU);
  Wire.write(0x43);     // first register of gyro values
  Wire.endTransmission(false);

  Wire.requestFrom(MPU,6);
  x = Wire.read() << 8 | Wire.read();
  y = Wire.read() << 8 | Wire.read();
  z = Wire.read() << 8 | Wire.read();
}

The values printed in the serial of x_offset, y_offset and z_offset are always 0.

Answer 1

There's a couple of things wrong here:

1. You are just getting the last read value doubled:

   x_offset += x_offset;

However x_offset is always replaced with the lates reading. You're not summing anything.

2. To get anything other than 0 out of dividing an integer by 2000 the value stored in the integer would have to be > 2000. But since you can only store a maximum of 32767 in your int16_t variables, even if you didn't have the problem in point 1, the variables would overflow and the results would be meaningless.

You need to:

• Use a second variable per axis to store your total
• Ensure that it is big enough to store the maximum reading × 2000. I'd suggest a long or int32_t.

For instance:

int16_t x_offset = 0;
int16_t y_offset = 0;
int16_t z_offset = 0;
int32_t x_total = 0;
int32_t y_total = 0;
int32_t z_total = 0;

And inside setup():

for(int i=0; i<2000;i++)
  {
    GetXYZ(x_offset, y_offset, z_offset);
    x_total += x_offset;
    y_total += y_offset;
    z_total += z_offset; 
    Serial.println(x_offset);
    delay(3);
  }
  x_total /= 2000;
  y_total /= 2000;
  z_total /= 2000;
  Serial.println(x_total);Serial.println("...");Serial.println(y_total);Serial.println("...");
Serial.println(z_total);Serial.println("...");