Events counting and timing.

[Aladdin2020]

Hi,

I’m building a program to count how many times I pressed the button and a timer that counts and displays the seconds (to 3 decimal places) between times that the button was pressed. So far, I was able to construct a simple VI to count the number of presses however, I’m struggling to Implement a timer that counts and displays the seconds between times the button was pressed. I would really appreciate any correction or feedback to point me in the right direction. My VI is attached.

Thanks in advance

[GerdW]

Hi XDX,

first i simplified your VI:

One boolean function is enough to look for falling edges…

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@Aladdin2020 wrote:

I’m struggling to Implement a timer that counts and displays the seconds between times the button was pressed.

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When the button (which you should give a better label, not just "boolean"!) is pressed you need to store the current timer value in a shift register. In the next iterations you simply subtract the stored timer value from the current value to get the elapsed time…

[altenbach · Accepted solution]

Use a latch action button and high resolution relative time, e.g. as follows:

(You could also take the tick count difference and divide by 1000, but you need to ensure that the max time between pushes is below 2^32ms, about 49 days)

(I doubt you need milliseconds, though)

[Aladdin2020]

Hi altenbach,

Thank you for your help! I appreciate your time! Your solution is pretty creative and it’s exactly what I was looking for. So thank you again!

[altenbach]

Make sure to learn about the various mechanical action modes.

If you have a switch boolean, here's an easier way to tell whenever it goes from false to true. (no need for a pile of not equal, NOT, AND, etc.).

Similarly, use "less than" to detect TRUE>False transition and "Not equal" to detect any change.

[Kevin_Price]

Though > and < operations on booleans in LabVIEW can work, I don't find it as natural as "regular" logic operations.  Plus, I still carry some historic memory from a time & place where > and < would have failed.  I avoid altenbach's "pile" of logic operators by using the "compound arithmetic" node which supports the option for inverting inputs and output individually.

It's a better fit for the way I think, to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to and all that.

-Kevin P

[StevenD]

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@altenbach wrote:

(You could also take the tick count difference and divide by 1000, but you need to ensure that the max time between pushes is below 2^32ms, about 49 days)

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This is a bit off topic, but..

I think going over 2^32 ms in this case doesn't matter as long as you keep the data in the same representation. If you get to where that happens your result should be a negative number, but because LabVIEW is representing it unsigned and the sign bit is not even in the data anymore you will get the correct answer. Hard to explain but I think it's best shown as follows.

Approaching the maximum value for a U32

Larger number has rolled over and started counting up from 0, but subtract still gives the "right" (wrong?) answer.

[altenbach]

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@StevenD wrote:
Larger number has rolled over and started counting up from 0, but subtract still gives the "right" (wrong?) answer.

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You don't have a problem at the rollover also long as the time difference is less than ~49 days. After that, the displayed time since last push will start again at zero even if the button has not been pressed for ~49 days! An incorrect result.

[joinde77]

i want to know what is this and from where i find it ?

thanks 

[ZYOng]

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@joinde77 wrote:

i want to know what is this and from where i find it ?

thanks 

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