How do I program digital pins on arduino uno? - arduino

Question

I'm trying to make a microcontroller with an arduino. I am supplying with +5volt from the arduino, sending it to an NC button (so i can manually decide when to output a certain timed pulse). After the button it goes to a pin that I have set as an inPin (pin8). Then I want the program to make pin 7 HIGH(with a delay), and then it goes to a transistor.
This is the code I tried making (I know almost nothing about coding):
int ledPin = 7;
int inPin = 8;
void setup() {
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(inPin, INPUT);
}
void loop()
{
if (inPin=HIGH) {
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
}
delay (500);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
}
For some reason the outPin is HIGH all the time. I remembered to hook up a resistor to GND so the digital pin would stay LOW when supposed to be LOW.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

if(inPin=HIGH) is a mistake, first of all use "==" instead of "=". ALso you need to READ input pin state: int invalue = digitalRead(inPin);
Also, all pins by default coonfigured as inputs, so you don't need use pinMode(inPin, INPUT);
After those changes your code will look like:
int ledPin = 7;
int inPin = 8;
void setup() {
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}
void loop()
{
if (digitalRead(inPin)==HIGH) digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
delay (500);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
}