MATLAB: I have a script that I run via a timer every 30 minutes — how to run this in background

run script in background

My script runs on a timer every 30 minutes, and I realize I need to run this in background so I can continue to use Matlab for other work. How do I run this timer script in background?

Best Answer

Robert - try creating a function that you can call from the command line. It will instantiate a timer and then periodically (whenever the timer callback fires) will do some work. For example, in a file named timerInBackground.m you could have

function [myTimer] = timerInBackground
myTimer = timer('Name','MyTimer',               ...
                'Period',30*60,                 ... 
                'StartDelay',0,                 ... 
                'TasksToExecute',inf,           ... 
                'ExecutionMode','fixedSpacing', ...
                'TimerFcn',@myTimerCallback); 
start(myTimer);
function myTimerCallback(hObject, eventdata)    
fprintf('hello!\n');

Then call this function from your command window as

 myTimer = timerInBackground;

Then every 30 minutes (30*60 seconds) the timer callback will fire and (in this case) print a hello! message to the console window. In the meantime, you can continue with other MATLAB tasks.

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Is there a way to flush any pending timer events till the timer stopfunction is getting executed

The ability to flush any pending timer events before the timer stopfunction is executed is not available in MATLAB.

There are no workarounds.

MATLAB: Stopping a Timer via another function

Jason - since you have a stop button, then you must be using a GUI which has (perhaps?) been created with GUIDE. If that is the case, then just save T to the handles structure so that when the stop button is pressed, it can stop the timer.

Suppose we have a simple GUI with two buttons - start and stop. The callback for the former starts the timer as

function start_Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)
 handles.myTimer = timer('Name','MyTimer',               ...
                         'Period',1.0,                   ... 
                         'StartDelay',1,                 ... 
                         'TasksToExecute',30,            ... 
                         'ExecutionMode','fixedSpacing', ...
                         'TimerFcn',@(~,~)disp('Fired.')); 
  guidata(hObject,handles);
start(handles.myTimer);
wait(handles.myTimer);
fprintf('timer has stopped');
delete(handles.myTimer);

In the above, we create a timer that fires every one second for 30 times (so 30 seconds). If we launch the GUI and press the start button, we see Fired displayed 30 times in the console before the timer has stopped message is written.

Now suppose our stop callback is

 function stop_Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)
 if isfield(handles,'myTimer')
     stop(handles.myTimer);
 end

Again, we launch the GUI and press the start button and observe the messages written to the console. But now we press the stop button before the 30 seconds is up and we observe that the timer has stopped message appears within a second.

Try the above and see what happens!

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Is there a way to flush any pending timer events till the timer stopfunction is getting executed

MATLAB: Stopping a Timer via another function

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