Is it necessary to restart a timer with a timeout() signal set at constant intervals?

[The178]

Curious about this:
I have a mainwindow class with a private variable object QTimer *heartbeat .
In mainwindow constructor, I have the following code:

heartbeat = new QTimer(this); //line1
heartbeat->setTimerType(Qt::PreciseTimer);  //line2
heartbeat->setInterval(500);  //line3
connect(heartbeat, SIGNAL(timeout(void)), this, SLOT(hbTimer(void))); //line4
heartbeat->start(); //line5

The last line of hbTimer() is heartbeat->start(); this, to me, means that the timer is restarted and hence we can accrue the 0.5 second timeout interval and execute hbTimer() again. The thing is, I thought the way the codeblock above is written will ensure that hbTimer() is executed every 0.5 seconds without us having to actually tell it to restart inside the hbTimer(). Do we need to restart heartbeat inside hbTimer() or does the code block ensure that it will be executed every 500ms? Meaning, if hbTimer() didn't restart heartbeat, would we only have one occurrence of a half second timeout? I thought that by using setInterval() we tell it to execute the SLOT every 500ms regardless of that being from 0 to 0.5 or 2.5 to 2.

[SGaist]

Hi,

Unless you set the single shot property to true, the timer will timeout at each interval until you stop it.

[fcarney]

@The178 said in Is it necessary to restart a timer with a timeout() signal set at constant intervals?:

connect(heartbeat, SIGNAL(timeout(void)), this, SLOT(hbTimer(void)));

Is the heartbeat not occurring? If not check that your connect didn't fail by checking the output of the console. If it failed for some reason you should see something to that effect.

[The178]

Hi @fcarney, it is occurring. And it also occurs with the same behavior when I comment out heartbeat.start() inside hbTimer() which is why I got curious if I actually need that line or if there is some hidden advantage of restarting the timer like this that I am missing. I thought hbTimer() will be reoccurring every 0.5seconds regardless of what goes on inside hbTimer (assuming we don't make any changes to heartbeat inside it).

Hi @SGaist, I don't think it's set to single shot property.

Unless you set the single shot property to true, the timer will timeout at each interval until you stop it.

Does the bold part mean from, eg. 0-0.5, 3.5-4, etc. (not only from 0 to 0.5s)?
Thank you

[Kent-Dorfman]

you most certainly don't want to have to restart the timer at every periodic interval because that would introduce drift.

the timeouts are guaranteed to occur at base_time+(n * interval) for the n(th) occurence. If you restart the timer in your slot then every iteration you would add some small amount of error.

[The178]

@Kent-Dorfman Ahh, perfect that answers my question.
I am taking over someone else's code and there's a lot going on. I'll consult the more experienced coworker to see if there is any purpose for resetting this timer. Can you think of a reason when this type of a reset would be desirable?

[Kent-Dorfman]

@The178 said in Is it necessary to restart a timer with a timeout() signal set at constant intervals?:

Can you think of a reason when this type of a reset would be desirable?

If you only care about the time interval BETWEEN events...such as do some proccessing and THEN delay for some period of time.

[The178]

@Kent-Dorfman You rock, thank you. Not sure how to set the question to answered, but it has now been answered haha.

[mrjj]

@The178
Hi
On your first post