Hi, I have created a simple exe that runs in the system tray and pops up a balloon notification every 30mins. It works fine, but i have used the Timer function, which every 30mins it pops up the alert and i click it and it goes away. What i need is for it to be in sync with the system clock, so that it only alerts me on the half hour and hour of every hour, or to when i specify. E.g. the alert pops up at 07:00, 07:30, 08:00 .. etc.

Is this possible?

Thanks,
Julian

Sure.

Check out Sleep for threads.

Have your app sleep for some amount of time (1 second? 100 mS? resolution is your choice). When it wakes up, have it check what time it is. Process the anwer to that, and if it is the ½ hour or straight-up time, take your action. Otherwise, re-invoke sleeping. If your resolution is 500mS or 1 second, you probably will have to ignore the 1's colum of the seconds in your check. If the resolution is finer than that, you probably won't. (Of course, there is the chance that your app won't get serviced the instant it wakes up, depending on how busy the computer is, who has priority, and so on.)

Perhaps a better approach would be to compute delays. When the app starts, figure out what the next alert time will be and calculate a sleep period. Then the app will remain dormant until the actual time it needs to do something. You'll eliminate the "polling" behavior. If you have a screen used for changing the alert times, then you simply recalculate the alert sleep based on all possible alerts so it will pick up new alerts that are set for times earlier than the one it's currently waiting on.

-Peter
compiledthoughts.com

well... if you’re going to go and be all systematic about it...

Thanks guys, will take a look and see how i get on :)