Delay node with variable delay

General
1

I am attempting to pass different delay amounts to a delay node through msg.delay. Can anyone tell me where I'm going wrong?

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3

Too easy.

Don't feel bad, but I have fallen for this trap many times myself.

The nodes which set time time:
The delay is in milliseconds not seconds.

So if you make the nodes:
2000
2500
3000
it will work.

4

I gave that a shot and am running into the same issue. If I inject the "ON Payload" then the delay works with one second and then the trigger node send a payload of "0". When I inject the 2000 payload i see the "2000" msg.payload, however when I attempt to send the "ON Payload" again the trigger node is never triggered.

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5

OK so I added a change node to inject msg.reset to the trigger node. Now the trigger node will work more than once, however the timer is always 1s regardless of the msg.delay that is sent.

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6

Hi.

I am sorry for my quick reply. I had just got up and was about to go out.

I'll look at the latest flow now.

Quick question:

Why do you think you need the trigger node?
And why do you call it "trigger and block"?
Block what?

If I am understanding it right, you have a "message" you usually send through with a 1 second delay between messages?

Playing with it as you posted it, I am really missing something in what you are wanting to do.

Looking at the middle one, it isn't much better in expanding on the delay and trigger nodes and what they do.

Actually now looking I am not even getting what the first one is supposed to do.

But hang in there.

I'll be back shortly.

7

Ok, I made a big mistake with my reply.

I made it. Not you.

The msg.delay needs to be sent with the message.
So: If you send msg.delay 3000 then send msg.payload Hello through the delay node as is, it will default to 1000 ms.

What you need to do is send a message with both the payload and the delay parts.

This is tricky because you need to store the delay value for subsequent messages.

I don't know how much you know about Node-Red.
(No problem. We all start at the bottom and work up.)
This is done with something called context.

Here is a flow which does what I think you want it to do.

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Look at the function node (store the delay value) and you will see that it stores the value of the delay when a message with a delay is received.

There are also a couple of lines you may want to delete.
Lines 4 and 9.
They are there only to show/help you see what is going on.
Otherwise the mess up the debug list on the right of the screen.

Then when it receives another message, it gets that stored value and creates a message which also has the msg.delay part in it and sends that to the delay node.

I'm not sure about the trigger node. But looking at what it was doing, I think a change node will suffice.
After the nominated time for the delay the message is sent out of the node and goes into the change node which then changes it to the new value.

Hope that works/helps.

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