MATLAB Programming

10 Scheduling Program Execution with Timers
Starting and Stopping Timers
After you create a timer object, you can start the timer by calling either the
start or startat function. This section describes
• “Starting a Timer” on page 10-10
• “Starting a Timer at a Specified Time” on page 10-11
• “Stopping Timer Objects” on page 10-11
• “Blocking the MATLAB Command Line” on page 10-12
Note Because the timer works within the MATLAB single-threaded
environment, it cannot guarantee execution times or execution rates.
Starting a Timer
To start a timer object, call the start function, specifying the timer object
as the only argument. The start function starts a timer object running;
the amount of time the timer runs is specified in seconds in the StartDelay
property.
This example creates a timer object that displays a greeting after 5 seconds
elapse.
1 Create a timer object, specifying values for timer object properties.
t = timer('TimerFcn','disp(''Hello World!'')','StartDelay', 5);
2 Start the timer object.
start(t)
3 Delete the timer object after you are finished using it.
delete(t);
10-10