How to create a dummy timer?

[Miiruku]

Hello,

I'm trying to measure execution time of a piece of code in nRF52832. I was searching and found that I need to get the start time and finish time by using

beginval = app_timer_cnt_get();
[piece of code]
endval = app_timer_cnt_get(); 

Then get the time difference by using 

app_timer_cnt_diff_compute(endval, beginval)

However, the difference value I got is always 0

I also found some suggestion in this web-board that I should create 'dummy timer' to make those function running.

How to create dummy timer? Where should I put that dummy timer, at timer initialization? 

[ovrebekk]

Hi 

One of my colleagues wrote a tutorial describing how to use the app_timer library:
https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/nordic/short-range-guides/b/software-development-kit/posts/application-timer-tutorial

If you scroll down to the "Create a repeated timer" example you can see how to initialize and start a repated timer, which is essentially what the dummy timer is. 

There is no need to do anything inside the timer handler, so you can remove the GPIO toggle call from the tutorial. 

Best regards
Torbjørn