process end notification with a sound file?

[PsiStar]

I use commercial software that runs from many minutes to hours & days. Needless to say this s/w doesn't not warrant vigilant visual monitoring, but it is a pain to remember to check when it is done. Completion time is quite variable and nonlinear. The program is highly CPU intensive. It has several single threaded preprocessing steps that setup a multi-threaded "solver". This may be followed with similarly single threaded post processing steps. The solver is the real interest as it is the part of the sequence that can take so much time.

Ultimately, it would be great to get an audible indicator as the stages are completed. I think about completion versus start as not all steps are used and some single threaded steps can take just a short bit of time. I have more than one s/w package that works in this way so this a general problem.

Here is my thought. A program that would "watch" for instances or image names and when they disappear particular sound files would be played. I imagine a list of names with the associated sound file would be loaded with "ImDone" (or whatever) as a system process.

Better would be to have the choice of the instance disappearing and/or just going to zero CPU usage. A minimum delay of CPU use is necessary as sometimes the task is very interactive and the sound file would then be pretty annoying.

Soooo ... anyone ever hear of such a program?

 

[vshah]

do the processes run automatically one after another? or are you starting one manually after the previous one finishes?

if the latter, you could make a simple batch file and play an audio file between each execution.

if the former, it should be possible to find or write a small program that will monitor the processes just as you say.

edit: a google search for "process monitor" shows a bunch of programs...i'm sure there is one that has alerts.

 

[PsiStar]

Back in the day before Windows compliance ... aka OLE enabled, GUI, & all that ... batch files were the answer. And, yes, they do run automatically after each other.