If what you need is simple enough, cron should work. The most important element is, as previously stated, cron needs the FULL path to whatever it is starting, so you need the FULL PATH to pd or a script calling pd.

For controlling another application via cron, I generally write specific scripts which then start, stop, or message the application. Once you get into writing a general control script where you need to run pd like a daemon, then you should look into an init script where you can run pd as a service.

On Jun 28, 2019, at 12:00 PM, pd-list-request@lists.iem.at wrote:

Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2019 11:36:26 +0200
From: IOhannes m zmölnig <zmoelnig@iem.at>
To: pd-list@lists.iem.at
Subject: Re: [PD] Cannot run pd patch from crontab at startup on raspi
Message-ID: <ef12c584-6fc4-62a5-c2e4-b3ff2043245c@iem.at>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

On 6/28/19 9:04 AM, Roman Haefeli wrote:
 * My final suggestion is to not use cron at all

+1 to everything you said, and this in particular.

--------
Dan Wilcox
@danomatika
danomatika.com
robotcowboy.com