Shiny observeEvent shows first event, but not second, third - r

Question

TL;DR: observeEvent is only working on the first instance, but not subsequent.
Explanation:
In a small shiny app below, I dynamically build a URL based on user input, which points to the corresponding pre-rendered "timer" gif images I have hosted on GH. In this shiny app code below, observeEvent works great to pull the sliderInput value (e.g. 5sec), build a URL, and then clicking 'go' will show the timer using a clever shinyjs package. However, if I do not change the input (still 5sec), clicking go doesn't rebuild the image. If I change the value to a different number (4sec), it will show the correct gif. If I change back to the original number (5sec), no gif. If I go to a new number (3sec), correct gif. If I print the value of input$time or of rv$time in my observeEvent, then each of those values are updating correctly (both print the corresponding value).
Goal: to show the gif that corresponds to the input$time upon each update of input$go
Reprex:
library(shiny)
library(tidyverse)
library(glue)
library(shinyjs)
# Define UI
ui <- navbarPage(title = "Reprex",
## RHYME TIME -----
tabPanel("Time",
useShinyjs(),
sidebarLayout(
sidebarPanel(
sliderInput("time",
"Seconds",
min = 3,
max = 10,
value = 5
),
actionButton(inputId = "go",
label = "Go"),
),
mainPanel(
HTML("<center>"),
shinyjs::hidden(htmlOutput("simple_timer")),
HTML("</center>")
)
)
)
)
# Define server logic
server <- function(input, output, session) {
#a container to store my time var
rv <- reactiveValues(
time = 0
)
#the event that is triggered by input$go getting clicked
observeEvent(input$go, {
rv$time <- input$time #this should update rv$time after go is clicked
shinyjs::show("simple_timer") #this is the clever package with simple show/hide funs
})
#the reactive text that generates my HTML
output$simple_timer <- renderText({
glue::glue('<img src ="https://github.com/matthewhirschey/time_timer/raw/main/data/{rv$time}_sec.gif",
align = "center",
height="50%",
width="50%">')
})
}
# Run the application
shinyApp(ui = ui, server = server)

Answer 1

There are a couple of issues with your code:
renderText won't refire if you press input$go again (w/o changing the slider). Becasue the idea is that observer/render fires whenever their reactives change. As your renderText depends on rv$time which does not change when input$time does not change, the render function is not fired on subsequent button presses. This can be remedied by including input$go in the render function setting an additional dependency on the button.
This will not, however, solve your problem, because the browser uses caching. It sees that the <img> tag did not change (same src), thus it does not reload the picture. To circumvent that you can use the trick from Disable cache for some images by adding a timestamp to the src.
To make a long story short, this code does the trick:
output$simple_timer <- renderText({
input$go # make code dependent on the button
# add `?timestamp=<timestamp>`to the src URL to convince the browser to reload the pic
glue::glue('<img src ="https://github.com/matthewhirschey/time_timer/raw/main/data/{rv$time}_sec.gif?timestamp={Sys.time()}",
align = "center",
height="50%",
width="50%">')
})