I want to time my MATLAB program to begin collecting data upon the creation of a file by a separate program. Is this possible?

I have software for a project that records data from Device A in realtime. However, the device and its software are incapable of recording another parameter that is of interest to my project. But I have Device B that is compatible with MATLAB and can easily record the additional parameter I want. However, I would like for the Device A software and MATLAB/Device B to begin recording data at the exact same time so that I can later easily match up the data sets for analysis.

The Device A software is unable to communicate with MATLAB as far as I know. The easiest solution I can think of is this: When Device A and its software begins recording data, it immediately creates a new file to store the data.

So I was thinking, I can use MATLAB to scan the appropriate folder for the data file created by Device A. The instant it gets created and MATLAB recognizes the specified file name (indicating that Device A has begun recording data), MATLAB will begin recording data from Device B.

How effective/temporally precise would my proposed solution be?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/99277-how-do-i-programmatically-detect-a-change-in-a-directory