Time out a Pixel Color search

[mark_miller66@bellsouth.ne]

SOMETIMES WHEN PERFORMING A SEARCH FOR PIXELS -

THE PIXELS CANNOT BE FOUND - THE USER MUST STOP

THE ROUTINE MANUALLY BY PRESSING PAUSE OR CLICKING

ON THE GREEN MAN.

THIS ROUTINE IS DESIGNED TO TIME OUT A SEARCH FOR A

SET PIXEL COLOR AT AT SET LOCATION WITH A SET COLOR.

THE ELAPSED TIME IS SET (IN THIS CASE TO 10SEC).

IF THE PIXEL COLOR IS NOT FOUND AT THE SET LOCATION

WITHIN 10 SECONDS THE SEARCH FOR PIXELS TIMES OUT

There are certainly better ways to accomplish the same = please post.

SEARCH FOR PIXEL TIME-OUT ROUTINE.mex

[rberq]

I generally write a repeat loop with a short delay within the loop. Delay time multiplied by number of repeats equals the (nominal) total time to wait, but if the expected color appears the wait is ended immediately. Here's a wait of zero to ten seconds.

REPEAT START 100 TIMES

GET PIXEL COLOR AT n1,n2 INTO n3

IF n3 = 1234567

REPEAT EXIT

ELSE

DELAY100ms (one tenth of a second)

END IF

REPEAT END

* We may exit from the loop when the color is found, or after the maximum repetitions. Therefore the check below

* figures out whether the color was found or not.

IF n3 NOT = 1234567

TEXT BOX DISPLAY not-found message

MACRO END

END IF

 

 

Maybe no "better" than your method, just another way of doing it. I'm not sure what you are asking for -- a way to end the wait early without killing the macro???

[Cory]

I'm with Rberg on this one, you should at least have a small delay otherwise it will do it millions of times a second and could pack up the system. I would try that first.

 

Next I would log what the color actually is in each iteration of the loop and see if it's actually ever seeing that color. The color you have specified is very specific and these days with blends, shadows, and textures of graphic components you need to be more flexible. I was trying to detect the green in a progress bar once but I counted hundreds of shades of green. I wrote about this on the forum and may still have a web page dedicated to colors in MEP on my site. But essentially I would break the color into RGB components and evaluate them. So if I wanted something that was mostly green I might look for a green value greater than 200 and red and blues less than 50. If you need help with this please let me know. But first you should check to see what colors MEP is actually seeing at those coordinates.

[mark_miller66@bellsouth.ne]

Thank you both. You help me see other issues which I blindly ignore such as nuance in pixel colors and in overloading the processor.

You guys are brilliant!

[rberq]

Speaking of pixel colors, I was trying to find the slider within the vertical scroll bar by looking at pixel color. I discovered that ME apparently does not see variations in color within the scroll bar. Or at least it is not seeing anything like the same color variations that my eye sees. Try it by turning on the Mouse Locator tool and see what I mean. What's that about??? (I have Windows 7 running ME3.)

[acantor]

Hi rberq,

 

Curious. Try changing the display theme from whatever it is (probably one of the "Aero" themes) to "Classic..."

 

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Personalization

 

...and test whether you can detect pixels in the scroll bars.

[acantor]

When I am testing pixel colours and want to include a time-out, I try to choose a value that makes some logical sense. For example, if I am checking horizontally one pixel at a time, I use the window width. If I am checking horizontally every ten pixels, I use the window width divided by ten.

 

Set Variable %x% = 0 ' Start checking pixels at (0, %y%)

Set Variable %y% = 100 ' Constant distance as measured from top of the window

Set Variable %WindowWidth% = width of window

Repeat %WindowWidth% times

 

Set Variable %PixelColour% at %x%, %y%

If %PixelColour% = 123456 Then

Exit Repeat

Else

Increment %x%

End if

Repeat End

 

I start by including delays, but once the macro is working, I try to get rid of them. There are circumstances when a short delay (5 ms? 100 ms?) at each iteration is essential.