Can a 3rd Time-out condition be added to PIXEL COLOR?

[Johnc]

On the manual right now:

Consider the PIXEL example statement below taken from a macro condition:

1 | IF | PIXEL COLOR | At Location [X:784 Y:602] | CHANGES::2::30::200 | MESSAGE PROMPT | Pixel changed 2 times in 30 seconds::Pixel Change::0



This reads - IF the PIXEL COLOR at mouse location X:784 and Y:602 CHANGES 2 times within 30 seconds, with a 200 milliseconds delay between changes, then run a MESSAGE PROMPT.



CHANGES can take three values  (CHANGES::1::2::3):

The amount of changes to detect.

A timeout value in seconds - The total time to wait for the changes.  If the time expires the statement will evaluate to FALSE and continue.  A value of 0 will wait until all changes have occurred.

A change delay value in milliseconds - The delay value forces a delay between detecting pixel changes.  This is useful to control sensitivity of pixel changes.  A value of 0 will skip a delay.

Suggestions:

1) Right now, if the time expires the statement will evaluate to FALSE and continue. This is not very helpful in most cases I think.
Evaluated FALSE and TIME-OUT are in many cases 2 very different conditions and they need to be handled differently.

I would suggest a 3rd condition (TIMEOUT) be added to allow the macro to go back to some previous lines to redo some work to make the PIXEL COLOR Evaluated TRUE like the following:

33 | IF | PIXEL COLOR | At Location [X:784 Y:602] | CHANGES::2::30::200 | CONTINUE | TIMEOUT | GOTO MACRO LINE | 25

i.e. if pixel color times out, goto line 25

2) I understand that CONTINUE cannot be used with ELSE but the command CONTINUE is the most simple and useful action for PIXEL COLOR, IMHO. Most of the time you want to wait for a color change rather than to execute the "ELSE" condition immediately, I think. Therefore I think the IF ELSE structure is not very useful for PIXEL COLOR CHANGES detection anyway.  However, the CONTINUE & TIMEOUT combo would seem very useful.

Thanks!

[Steve]

Hi John,

Using CONTINUE as the action on conditions waits for TRUE before continuing to the next line. This is the same with PIXEL change conditions.
Your suggestion of combining CONTINUE and a new TIMEOUT action to PIXEL conditions sorta cancels out the whole point of having a CONTINUE action. Why not just 'catch' the TIMEOUT with an ELSE. Something like this:

33 | IF | PIXEL COLOR | At Location [X:657 Y:335] | CHANGES::2::2::200 | WAIT MILLISECONDS | 1 | ELSE | 2 | RUN ACTION | GOTO MACRO LINE | 25
This example we use WAIT MILLISECONDS 1 as the substitute for CONTINUE, it's essentially the same, and we 'catch' the timeout with ELSE and run our GOTO action.

[Johnc]

33 | IF | PIXEL COLOR | At Location [X:657 Y:335] | CHANGES::2::2::200 | WAIT MILLISECONDS | 1 | ELSE | 2 | RUN ACTION | GOTO MACRO LINE | 25

oic Steve! So I didn't know "CHANGES::2::2::200" actually would "wait" for 2 seconds for the desired color condition.
I thought it would just "look" for changes instantaneously for a split second and then most likely did not see any changes and skip to "ELSE".
That's why I thought I needed the "CONTINUE" action to get the PIXEL COLOR detection to "wait". I completed misunderstood how the
PIXEL COLOR condition works!

This is making sense now and I will give that a try but my time-out would be more like 30 seconds as follows. Thanks Steve!


33 | IF | PIXEL COLOR | At Location [X:657 Y:335] | CHANGES::2::30::200 | WAIT MILLISECONDS | 1 | ELSE | 2 | RUN ACTION | GOTO MACRO LINE | 25


[Johnc]

The Time-out action is working so well now with your suggestions! Thanks so much Steve! You rock!