An Arduino library to run tasks on a regular, timed basis:- things like checking buttons, checking sensors, updating displays and seeing if there is something to do.
There seem to be a few similar libraries, but none seemed to be quite right for what I wanted. The library is simple and easy to use and doesn't use interrupts, leaving these available for genuinely time-critical actions.
See the Examples for how to use but here's a summary.
a) Set up a list of all the functions that you want called and the time schedule on which you want them to be called. I was really thinking about tasks that need to be run every few ms, or possibly every few seconds. The timing will not be exact, as it relies on your code calling the scheduler on a regular basis and on your routines not taking a lot of time. (e.g. if you have a little routine that needs to be called every 20ms but you have another monster routine called every 1000ms but that runs for 500ms then the little routine will not get called all the time whilst the monster routine is running)
b) Call the Exec.delay() or Exec.yield() functions on a regular basis (as often as you can) from code outside your scheduled functions (e.g. in your topmost loop() routine)
c) The appropriate scheduled functions (your 'tasks') will be called during your Exec.delay() or Exec.yield() functions.
d) Enjoy
In use, it soon became clear that a few other functions would be useful. So the library now allows tasks to be enabled/disabled, deleted and 'one-shot' tasks that delete themselves after use.
If you write your entire sketch as a series of routines called by Exec then you can hand over control to Exec entirely with a call to Exec.loop(). In the simplest case, your Arduino sketch loop() function then becomes...
loop() {
Exec.loop();
}
In this case you don't need Exec.delay() or Exec.yield() this is all looked after for you in the Exec.loop()
HTML documentation will be found in the docs folder of the library.