Add a timer with elapsed time

[lucasvieites]

Hi, this is an enhancement request to have a simple timer that shows the hours/minutes/seconds that a job is taking. I understand that a "time remaining" timer would be complex to calculate (correct me if I'm wrong) so having at least a way to know how long a job has been running (so you can "guesstimate" the remaining time yourself) would be handy.
Thank you in advance,
Lucas Vieites

[lmftiv]

I guess that the remaining time could be calculated from the black pixels of the image. Just show percentage how many of them have been done. Of course there is some time used by moving trough the white pixels to get to the next black one but that shouldn't be too much....

[lucasvieites]

I haven't programmed at this low level in a long time and am no longer familiar with the languages, techniques, etc.
If you can make it work it would be fantastic.

[camrein]

@lmftiv That's a possibility I have been thinking (even started implementing) a few months ago. However, I abandoned the idea as I didn't like having to store the state of the engraver internally in the software and trying to keep it synchronized. Especially with the combination of control codes that have different behavior depending on the engraver's state. These changes would have introduced unnecessary complexity for a rather small feature.

@lucasvieites Implementing a clock that shows the elapsed engraving time is a good idea. Maybe a combination with a prediction of the total engraving time could be possible. For example, by taking the number of black pixels and multiplying it with the burn time selected. Although it is probably not perfect as it doesn't include the time necessary to move the head, especially for long distances, hopefully, it's in an acceptable range.

Nevertheless, I want to fix the support for the latest engravers (aka protocol v3) prior introducing new features.