HELP! How do I start a timer when a task starts? OR how do I make a task stop even if the limit switch is still held down

Programming Support ROBOTC Tech Support
1

Hello, I’m building something for competition and I’m somewhat inexperienced new to RobotC. (I’m using Vex 2.0 Cortex with Natural Language PLTW. )

One of my actions was a lever that holds down a switch, the problem is that it makes the task go on forever. I tried fixing this by putting a condition in the while loop but it just breaks the code. So now, I tried making a timer that waits about 90 seconds although I think it’s pretty risky, since I only have a tiny amount of time to start it and I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be ready before competition.

Any help? I believe the only options is either figuring out how to end a task if the limit switch hasn’t been released or making a timer AFTER the task was started. Here’s my code:

task slider()
{
startMotor(Motor1, -15);
wait(34);
startMotor(Motor1, 15);
wait(32);
stopMotor(Motor1);
}
task fan()
{
startMotor(Motor2,55);
startMotor(Motor3,55);
wait(5);
stopMotor(Motor2);
stopMotor(Motor3);
}

task checkSensors()
{
repeat(forever)
{
if (SensorValue(Switch1))
{
startTask(slider);
}
if (SensorValue(Switch2))
{
startTask(fan);
}
}
}
task main()
{
startTask(checkSensors);
wait(80);
stopTask(checkSensors);
}

Sorry if it’s not inside a box and that it’s not a image, I just signed up. Again. I would really appreciate any help.

2

I would suggest making it set a variable to make it not repeat, so it sets the variable to 1 when the lever is pressed, then sets it to 0 when it is not pressed.

Make sure you know that cortex is NOT vex legal in VRC any more, that was changed at the beginning of this competition

3

ah, okay thank you! The competition I’m going to is different so it’ll be fine (hopefully)

4

If you do want to do it with a timer, you can set a variable to the time before the function, and update the time during the function, then compare (timeAtStart- currentTime) >= wanted time

5

i’ll try this, thank you!