Time Tasks

Last modified: Fri May 25 17:51:34 2001

What are Time Tasks?

Beside time events actions often triggered by simple periodic time events. The Setting Time Tasks let you define such periodic tasks in flexible manner.

(For experts: The Time Task mechanism inside MOBOTIX M1 is based on the cron daemon, well known from UNIX systems.)

Defining Time Tasks

Tasks

Every Time Task is defined for a task. Tasks on MOBOTIX M1 are:

none	No task. This is the same as "delete".
Reboot	Reboot will reset the camera to the given time. It is often useful to reboot the camera once a day, once a week or something else to refresh it, when it is located on difficult to reach places. The factory default has set a reboot once a day.
Adjust Time by RTC	Because the Real Time Clock is much more precise than the system clock of the camera, it is useful to adjust the system clock in shorter steps (e.g. once a day), so delay to adjust is small enough. For more information see Date and Time. The factory default has set a time adjust once a day.
FTP-*	For every FTP Profile defined in FTP Profiles you will find an entry here to select it. The "*" is replaced by the profile name.
MAIL-*	For every Mail Profile defined in Mail Profiles you will find an entry here to select it. The "*" is replaced by the profile name.

The FTP and mail profiles can be selected as soon as the defined. It is not necessary to reboot the camera to include them in time tasks.

Timefields

The following five rows are used to describe the times, the tasks are started.

Minutes	Minutes from 0 to 59
Hours	Hours from 0 to 23
Days	Day of month from 1 to 31
Month	Month from 1 to 12
Week Days	Day of Week from 0 = Sunday, 1 = Monday, ... 6 = Saturday, 7 = Sunday

Multiple Time Entries

Time cannot only be given as a point, also as a list, a range, or as steps:

number	A simple number means "at that time". E.g. 12 in the Minutes field means "at 12th minute".
*	The "" means "every". E.g. the "" in Hours means "every hour".
List	Several numbers can be composed to a list. E.g. "3,6,8" at Days means "at 3rd, 6th, and 8th day of the month"
Ranges	The timefields can contains ranges like "7-9", At Month field it means "from 7th month (July) to 9th month (September)".
Steps	It is also possible to short a list by using steps. E.g. "7-18/2" at Hour means "from 7th hour to 18 hour but only every second hour", what is equivalent to "7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17". You can also combine this with "", so "/10" at Minutes means "every 10 minutes".

Describing a Complete Time

A task will be started, it the current time is matched by the value in every row. For example:

Min	Hour	Day	Month	Wday	Explanation
*/10	7-15	*	6-9	2,4	Will start the given task every 10 minutes between 7am and 3pm, at every day of June to September, but only between Tuesday and Thursday every day and month.
*/15	8-16	*	*	1-5	Will start a task every quarter from 8am to 4pm from Monday till Friday.

Options

At the right hand of the page you will find up to two switches.

inactive	If selected, the timetask will not be installed, but noted in the configuration.
remove	If the time task was accepted, the remove switch enables to remove the time task.

Saving Time Tasks

By pressing Check and Save the time tasks are checked and saved. If any error occurs an error message will be shown, in this case the time task will not be saved till the error is fixed.

Note that the time tasks are not activated until the camera is rebooted.

Storing Time Tasks

To activate and store time tasks over a power fail of the camera you have to Store Configuration (see also Configuration).

Activating Time Tasks

To activate time tasks, you have to reboot the camera.