What I am doing wrong combining the two scripts?

Nothing, as far as I can tell, other than that in this code you aren't changing $name once the main loop has been entered, as choroba pointed out.

a simulation of the third party component changing the scalar value

If it doesn't work with this third party component, then probably that is the culprit, and you'd have to tell us more about it and provide an SSCCE that reproduces the problem.