Smoothening Analog Input Values

Question

I made a Potentiometer testing device that reads the analog values from an MCP3008 ADC.

In order to hide the sporadic analog input fluctuations I am calculating the average of several measurements in a while loop with a function similar to the following:

def analog_average():
    analog1 = (mcp_analog)
    time.sleep(0.001)
    analog2 = (mcp_analog)
    time.sleep(0.001)
    analog3 = (mcp_analog)
    time.sleep(0.001)
    analog4 = (mcp_analog)
    time.sleep(0.001)
    analog5 = (mcp_analog)
    analog_average = ((analog1 + analog2 + analog3 + analog4 + analog5) / 5)
    print(analog_average)

mcp_analog is the value of the ADC's first analog input.

I am getting the results that I want. Is there, however, a cleaner-more efficient way?

Answer 1

Using a loop and statistics.mean:

from statistics import mean

def analog_average(N):
    measures = []
    for _ in range(N):
        measures.append(mcp_analog.value)
        time.sleep(0.001)

    return mean(measures)

print(analog_average(5))

This way you can easily change the amount of samples without having to add more and more lines of sleep and analog variables.