terrypin Posted January 13, 2011 Report Share Posted January 13, 2011 Yesterady I wrote a macro to report the status of something at 10 minute intervals. The activation is specified as follows: Scheduled When a specified time has elapsed Run every 0 hours and 10 minutes and 0 seconds Start calculating the next runtime at: 21:00 Yet as you see from the following initial extract of the results this morning, within a few hours it had drifted 2 minutes: 21:10 21:20 21:30 21:40 21:50 22:00 22:10 22:20 22:31 22:40 22:51 23:01 23:11 23:21 23:31 23:41 23:51 00:01 00:11 00:21 00:31 00:41 00:51 01:01 01:11 01:22 01:32 etc Can anyone explain this relatively low level of accuracy pleaase? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevin Posted January 13, 2011 Report Share Posted January 13, 2011 Did you change the Timer Interval setting found under Options, Preferences, Activations, Scheduler tab? This is set to 10 seconds, by default. Try setting it to 1 second. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cory Posted January 13, 2011 Report Share Posted January 13, 2011 I made a test macro for 1 minute intervals and the results were all over the place. Then I followed Kevin's suggestion which made it more accurate but there's a definite drift. No idea why, just sharing my observation. 07:46:33 07:47:43 07:48:53 07:50:03 07:51:13 07:52:13 07:53:23 07:54:24 07:55:24 Set to 1 second 07:56:24 07:57:24 07:58:24 07:59:25 08:00:25 08:01:26 08:02:26 08:03:27 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terrypin Posted January 13, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 13, 2011 Thanks both. You're right, I hadn't changed the default from 10s. That will improve it a lot. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cory Posted January 13, 2011 Report Share Posted January 13, 2011 I set the interval to 30 seconds and here are the results. Seems like the same drift. 08:06:58 08:07:29 08:07:59 08:08:30 08:09:01 08:09:31 08:10:02 08:10:33 08:11:04 08:11:35 08:12:06 08:12:37 08:13:07 08:13:38 08:14:09 08:14:39 08:15:09 08:15:39 08:16:10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cory Posted January 13, 2011 Report Share Posted January 13, 2011 It appears that either something is broken in the scheduler or more likely it's just not designed to be accurate but rather precise. I'm guessing that the drift you saw would eventually bump back down eventually. So if you need accuracy I'd like to suggest you use the Windows Scheduler or a macro just to drive the other macro. It would simply be a repeat forever with a delay. And to get it right on the mark initially you could get the current time, do the math to the next desired run time, and make that the initial delay before the one in the repeat. Just a thought. The downside is that Forrest would be running all the time and often reporting "Multiple macros" are running. This is why I prefer the Windows Scheduler method. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terrypin Posted January 13, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 13, 2011 Thanks, I'd follow that approoach for any more demanding applications I have in future. I use Scheduled Tasks quite a lot already. But this was only a one-off and the inaccuracy didn't turn out to mattter much after all. It's interesting that Kevin's suggestion made no significant improvement; I'd assumed it would, just on theoretical grounds. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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