General EQWatcher Concepts > EQWatcher Anatomy > Timers

What are timers?

Timers tell EQWatcher to do something specific after a length of time.  Unlike old EQWatcher, there are no triggers directly involved with each timer.  Any trigger that starts a timer must be compiled into an EQWatcher Advanced script.

Generally your timers will play a sound after a length of time.  This is the simplest form of an EQWatcher timer, and requires no knowledge of the EQWatcher script language. 

Creating a simple timer

Timers are much simpler than triggers.  First decide the length of time to wait, in minutes and seconds. 

Okay that was easy.  Now that you know how long the timer waits, you must pick a sound to go with it.  Sounds can be .WAV files, CD tracks, MP3s, text-to-speech, or an EQWatcher Advanced command (sure it's not a sound, but it can be attached to the trigger just like sounds can).  If you want to play a .WAV file, you must know the path name of the .WAV (in this version, relative path names may not work correctly, so please use the full path name).  If you want to play a CD track, you must know the track number.  If you want to play an MP3, you must know a search string for the MP3 (see the WinAMP section on playing MP3 by keyword).   If you want to give some text to speak, you must know the text you want to speak.  If you want to give a command to execute, you must know the command (the sound type for this is "alias").

Now that you have this information ready to use, you can make up a name for the trigger and finally give the command to add the trigger.  The command is formatted like this: "timer [sound type] "[name]" [minutes]:[seconds] [sound information]".  The sound type can be one of the following: "wav" "wav sync" "cd" "mp3" "TTS" "TTS sync" "alias".   I'm sure your question now is "why is there wav and wav sync? I thought I was just playing a wav".  By default, TTS and .WAV files will play asynchronously -- this means that they can be interrupted by the next sound.  If you make them "sync" this means they will play synchronously -- this means they will play fully before the next sound.  Asynchronous .WAV and asynchronous TTS will play at the same time without interruption.  Synchronous sounds can pause or change WinAMP's volume for their duration, since they are considered the "important" sounds, ones that you don't want to miss because your MP3 is playing too loud.  The setting for this is on the main window.

Examples:

timer wav "test wav" 10:00 "c:\windows\media\ding.wav"

timer mp3 "test mp3" 60:00 "satriani summer song"

timer cd "test cd" 30:00 "1"

timer TTS sync "test tts sync" 15:00 "15 minutes is up"

timer alias "test alias" 8:00 "disable TTS"

Removing your timers

Removing your timer is pretty easy, as long as you remember what you called it.  Timers are never permanent, they are automatically removed as soon as the time is up.  However, for when you want to remove the timer before the time is up, the command to remove your timer is simply "trigger remove "[name]""

Examples:

trigger remove "test wav"

trigger remove "test mp3"

trigger remove "test cd"

trigger remove "test tts sync"