Distance Readings Getting Manipulated When Calling Unrelated Function I'm using a Lidar Lite v3 to measure the distance from one object to another. I pass the results to the serial monitor to see what that distance is. It appears that when I call an unrelated function, the distance that's being printed seems to be roughly subtracted by 512.

To describe exactly what I mean, this is my function:

int pulseWidth = pulseIn(monitorPin, HIGH); //begin measurement of time
int distanceConverted = (pulseWidth / 10); // 10usec = 1 cm of distance
Serial.println(distanceConverted); // Print the distance


and it gives me an output of this (which is correct): 

780 cm
787 cm
790 cm
794 cm
782 cm
787 cm
790 cm
786 cm
790 cm
780 cm
788 cm
784 cm


I'm using these distances to control LED lights and a speaker, and call this function to do so: 

void lights(int distanceConverted)
{
    if (distanceConverted &lt; 1000 &amp;&amp; distanceConverted &gt; 500)
    {
      digitalWrite(yellowLEDPin, HIGH);
      delay(20);
      tone(8, 35000, 250);
    }

    else if (distanceConverted &lt;= 500)
    {
      digitalWrite(redLEDPin, HIGH);
      delay(20);
      tone(8, 40000, 250);
    }
}


However, when this is called (and I call the function after I print the distance values), these are the results I get:

268 cm
267 cm
266 cm
267 cm
269 cm
267 cm
265 cm
267 cm
266 cm
266 cm
267 cm
264 cm
269 cm


When I try to account for this and multiply by three, my values become even more off and seem to be multiplied by ten:

int distanceConverted = (pulseWidth / 10)*3; // 10usec = 1 cm of distance

New Values: 
2640 cm
2673 cm
2634 cm
2649 cm
2592 cm
2619 cm
2631 cm
2628 cm
2631 cm
2673 cm
2634 cm


At first I thought it might have been the delays within the lights() function manipulating the readings, but even after commenting them out I still get the same results. I don't know how the function could be throwing my values off.

Edit: I noticed at when the program is first looping, the 512 gets subtracted after the first time I run through the lights() function.

761 cm &lt;- first value from sensor, correct
312 cm
308 cm 
308 cm 
309 cm
308 cm
307 cm
307 cm
309 cm
308 cm
308 cm


When I comment out the tone() function, that seems to fix my problem. Could that function be overwriting a bit in the memory register causing it to subtract 512 from my distanceConverted variable?
The tone function uses timer interrupts to toggle a GPIO pin to make noise. That's quite intense from a CPU point of view and is most likely skewing the timing of the pulseIn function.

I would suggest not using tone if you can help it. Maybe change the frequency of a PWM output to something suitable and use analowWrite to create a 50% duty square wave.

Also learning how to use the Input Capture peripheral of the MCU (read the datasheet) will enable you to perform asynchronous sampling of your pulses and obtain much more accurate results.