I am using my java program to control a motor via Arduino. I plan to introduce the delays in the software itself and not in Arduino. How can I accurately do that since introducing delays using thread.sleep() is very inaccurate? Additionally, I want to pause the delay and upon resume, I want the software to complete the rest of the delay. For example, if I kept a delay for 1000 milliseconds and pause at 700 milliseconds, I want to stop the motor; upon resume, I want to finish the rest of the 300 milliseconds. How efficient it would be if I use a while loop till the System.currentTimeMillis() reaches a specific amount of time?
Make use of ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor. ScheduledExecutorService is an executor service that allows you to schedule future and recurring asynchronous tasks in Java.
It has been observed that long/ recurring tasks executed using ScheduledExecutorService can result in Memory Leaks. Since Java 7, ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor exposed a new method setRemoveOnCancelPolicy. Make sure this flag is set, as a precautionary measure.
ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor executor = new ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor(1);
// Explicitly call setRemoveOnCancelPolicy on the instance
executor.setRemoveOnCancelPolicy(true);
As per javaDoc, setRemoveOnCancelPolicy sets the policy on whether cancelled tasks should be immediately removed from the work queue at time of cancellation. This value is by default false