How to display a running timer in MATLAB Design App

Dear Coder, I have design a simple app using App Design. The App supposed to show a time lapse while some other activity are running simultanously. Other thread have discussed about the implementation of time lapse under App design by the Design App such as link or link.

However, im still unable to replicate the solution given in these thread.

Hence, I tried something like below,

while app1.StarttimelapseButton.Value==1
    T2 = clock;
    time_elapsed = etime(T2,T1);
    app1.TimeLapseEditField.Value=sprintf('%.6f',time_elapsed );
    drawnow
end

% Next lines
% Function responsible for the execution of the "Other activity"

However, the code execution stuck in the while loop if using the above code.

May I know how to implement a timer in AppDesigner. The m and mlapp files that I created can be found this link.

Thanks in advance for the time to entertain this problem

[Mohammad Sami]

The issue is your while loop will not exit, until someone unclick the toggle button. hence no work will be done.

If you were to use a timer to implement, an issue could be that because your main code is doing a lot of processing, this will prevent the timer from getting executed, hence UI maynot reflect any updates.

If your main code is doing something in a for loop, you can perhaps, do an update the ui from inside the for loop.

[polo sepian]

Hi Sami, are you suggesting bundle the function for "öther activity" inside the for loop?

[Mohammad Sami]

No. I am suggesting that your UI update needs to be from inside the "other activity" code. If your other activity is primarily executing a for / while loop, you can also put in a line to update the UI.

If not, you can update the UI after completing certain appropriate "milestones" in your "other activity" code.

[Mohammad Sami]

Also another option to show "activity" in appdesigner is to use uiprogressdlg. This will show a progress bar, which you can use to show the milestones / progress on.

progrssbar = uiprogressdlg(app.UIFigure);
progrssbar.Value = 0.1;
progrssbar.Message = 'Doing A';
% activity A
progrssbar.Value = 0.5;
progrssbar.Message = 'Doing B';
% activity B
progrssbar.Value = 1;
progrssbar.Message = 'Finished';
close(progrssbar);