How to pause timer.

Hi guys. I'm having a function file for a GUI to start a timer count

function Start_Timer()

    global myTimer ;
    % Execute function Elapsed_Time
    handles = guidata(gcf);
    T = 0;
    myTimer = timer('TimerFcn',{@Elapsed_Time, handles}, ...
              'Period', 1, 'TasksToExecute', 999);
    set(myTimer, 'ExecutionMode', 'fixedRate');
    set(myTimer, 'UserData', T);
    start(myTimer);
  end

I made another GUI to pause the timer but i'm not sure how do i pause the timer.

function Pause_Timer()

How do I do it? :S

Answer 1

[Geoff Hayes]

Nicholas - rather than using a global variable for your timer, save this object to the handles structure so that you can access it from other functions (callbacks, etc.). Try the following

 function Start_Timer()

 handles = guidata(gcf);
 T = 0;
 handles.myTimer = timer('TimerFcn',{@Elapsed_Time, handles}, ...
                         'Period', 1, 'TasksToExecute', 999);

 % update the handles structure
 guidata(gcf,handles);

 set(handles.myTimer, 'ExecutionMode', 'fixedRate');
 set(handles.myTimer, 'UserData', T);

 % start the timer
 start(handles.myTimer);

Now, I'm not clear by what you mean by I made another GUI to pause..., so I will assume that you have just one GUI and have some other functionality (a button perhaps?) that when pressed will pause the timer. I think though, you will have to stop the timer and restart it, as there doesn't seem to be a pause command. So you may need to do something like

 function Pause_Timer()

 handles = guidata(gcf);

 if strcmpi(get(handles.myTimer,'Running'),'on')
    % timer is running, so stop it
    stop(handles.myTimer);
 else
    % timer is not running, so start it
    start(handles.myTimer); 
 end

[Nicholas Ng]

Ahh yes. Not GUI sorry. Button haha. Oh ... I already have a button that restart the timer. I'm doing an assignment where I have to build a minesweeper game. But I'm asked to improvise or add on features... So the pause feature is not possible?? :/

[Geoff Hayes]

Something similar to pause is possible by stopping and re-starting the timer, as shown above. So that may be sufficient for your purposes. It seems to maintain "state" between stops and starts, and by that I mean, the UserData keeps its previous values from before the timer was stopped.

[Nicholas Ng]

Ok Thanks ! I'll try doing it now :)