I made a program that grabs data from the web and then draws an image using the data. The data is being loaded in void setup so I can use it everywhere in the code, not just draw, I want to update the data grabbing and the void draw every 5 minutes but I cannot just put a timer around the whole code. what is the best thing to do?

Thundarr wrote on Dec 2^nd, 2009, 6:29pm:

Not the right solution...

I often say: "Don't load data in draw(), except in some cases".
Well, that's precisely one of these cases.
But of course, unlike most snippets I saw, we won't load data on each frame. Just using the good old "elapsed time" pattern.
Code:

// Declare a global time tracking variable
long timeSinceLastEvent;
long DELAY_BETWEEN_EVENTS = 5 * 1000;  // 5s

void setup()
{
  // Usual setup stuff, size() and al
  // Record starting time
  timeSinceLastEvent = millis();
}

void draw()
{
  if (millis() - timeSinceLastEvent > DELAY_BETWEEN_EVENTS)
  {
    DoSomething();
    timeSinceLastEvent = millis();
  }
}
 

You can also do something every n frameCount frames, but it is less reliable (you can change frameRate).

also declare a global variable/array for your data ( dont know what kind of data, depending on what you load) so you can access and update it from anywhere.