I had almost the same problem. Here is a example that uses a perl based ping. I riped this out of some other code, but you could add your code to it and make a few adjustments.

use Net::Ping;
use POSIX ":sys_wait_h";
my $doping="true";
my pid;

$SIG{ALRM}=\&end_of_time;

foreach $host ( @HOSTS ) {
  # If true ping the host 1st to see if its on the network.
  if ( $doping eq "true" ) {
        $pong = Net::Ping->new( $> ? "tcp" : "icmp", 10);
        (defined $pong )
        or die "Can't create new ping object: $!\n";
        if ( not $pong->ping($host) ) {
                $pong->close;
                print "$host --Dead--\n";
                #go to next host
                next;
                }
  $pong->close;
  }

  ### Set alarm incase processes hang
  alarm $end_of_time;

  ### Do your Checks here
  $pid=....;
    

}

sub end_of_time {
     alarm 0;
     kill => $pid;
     print "----[ EOT Reached Killed shell process [ $shell ] for host
+ [ $host ]----\n";
}
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