Start timer implementation (Automation feature)

[nourHajRamadan]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

The GUI is great, however, I need to automate the compression process. Because of security issues at work, I couldn't use Remote-Desktop. I also can't do the compression during work hours, because the data has to be available. So an automation feature in the platform would be of great benefit.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I initially thought of making another GUI that automates the compression tasks using czicompress (since I don't know .NET), but I thought, the integration of even a start timer in means of automation on original developers part would be much easier. It would be of benefit in general too, since the compression is needed to be applied on big databases in data servers with multiple users.
So basically I am asking for the implemetation of a start timer, and maybe with time and interest an automation structure to run compression in set intervalls, make reports, give the option to check files for errors, replace uncompressed data upon check, etc.

Additional context

No response

[DaveyJonesBitPail]

I'll pass the request along, but it would not be a trivial implementation because the most robust way of dealing with task scheduling is going to require interacting with the OS task/job scheduling system.

In lieu of waiting for this I would highly recommend using CZICompress CLI tool as opposed to the CZIShrink GUI for scheduled automations. The README of that directory shows examples for batch processing files with Bash and PowerShell, but any scripting language capable of invoking an external process is able to do the same thing.

Leveraging the Windows Task Scheduler (for Windows) or a cron job (for UNIX-based OS) would most likely be the path of least resistance.

Some caveats to using CZICompress directly (ie things to handle in the wrapping script):

• Parallelizing the compression would be up to the script invoking CZICompress
  • Most of the time the reasonable amount of compression tasks to parallelize will depend on the backing storage so your mileage may vary
• Writing and persisting logs in case of issues
• Data safety
  • We try to err on the side of caution of avoiding data-loss in the GUI by avoiding directly overwriting files with their compressed result. I would highly recommend doing the same in case any issues crop up.

[DaveyJonesBitPail]

Additional Note:
Although the feature request was more specifically for "Start operation after waiting X time", my response was more focused on operation scheduling within the GUI as a whole. I would still recommend using the work-around described above for "Start operation after waiting X time" with the CLI tool rather than the GUI but perhaps doing that directly with the script invocation rather than using the OS task scheduler if simplicity is desired.

[nourHajRamadan]

Thank you for the detailed response. I can see how this would be more efficient, however, the people interacting with the compression solution won't be able to use scripts and so on.

A GUI is needed here. And as the offered GUI is doing all the necessary side tasks (like log files and parallelizing), I felt it would be easier to add a timer to the start button (without any interaction with the os scheduling system), so compression jobs could be done outside of office hours.

Since a GUI is required in my case anyways, the other way to go would be to implement a new GUI that serves my purposes, but that would take a lot of time and effort and it would be inferior to the existing GUI by default, since I don't know a lot about the library else than what is described in the readme.

In any case, if this minor addition to the start button is harder to implement than it looks, I would just start working on my own GUI in a couple of weeks (I can't really just fork this one, because I'm not familiar with the used Framework).

Thank you again for humoring my requsest!

[m-ringler]

The most recent versions of ZEN and ZEN core will produce compressed CZIs by default. If your ZEN version is a bit older (but not too much) you may be able to turn on compression during experiments in the Acquisition Options. If CZIs are saved compressed from the start there will be no need for an extra step to compress them afterwards.
Uncompressed saving may be the better option in rare circumstances, though (e. g. if you already have high CPU load during acquisition).

[nourHajRamadan]

I wasn't aware of this. We do have a new enough version of ZEN, that supports compression. This would be very helpful for future aqusitions. Thanks!