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Topic: Real-Time Clock

This would make a very useful feature, and would save having to add a RTC module to our projects.

A new object "Time/Date" with configurable output variables to the sketch (include only the ones you need).

The time and date data would come from the phone.

2B, or not 2B, that is the pencil ...

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Re: Real-Time Clock

Yes, this is a nice feature.
How do you plan to use it? As long as there is a connection, you get the current time. When there is no connection, these variables are not changed. Perhaps the library should synchronize the time itself, without additional elements. What do you think?

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Re: Real-Time Clock

The mcu application might need to know the current time and date in order to implement some control functions perhaps ?

It is assumed that the mcu has to connect to the app regularly in order to achieve this.  Local (mcu) timing without an RTC could drift dramatically, connecting the phone app would update any local timing parameters.

From the phone to the mcu would be the only point of reference without the hardware having a RTC module

2B, or not 2B, that is the pencil ...

4

Re: Real-Time Clock

remotexy wrote:

Yes, this is a nice feature.
How do you plan to use it? As long as there is a connection, you get the current time. When there is no connection, these variables are not changed. Perhaps the library should synchronize the time itself, without additional elements. What do you think?

More thoughts on this topic....

Anyone using an RTC in their project has to initialise it, usually by downloading a temporary sketch to do so.  Once initialised, the RTC is left on its own to deliver what it thinks is accurate timing. We all know they drift somewhat...

If you had an object RTC that can deliver YY MM DD Hr Mn Sc as 6 bytes from the GUI, we could use the rising edge of the "Connect Flag" to update our hardware (or even software) clocks, making the initialisation process redundant. Every successful connection re-synchronises our local timing ...

Since the date/time is already display on the GUI, the RTC data could be a hidden object, like the "sound" object, but would be available in the output variables if configured in the GUI, which it doesn't need to be like any other object.

2B, or not 2B, that is the pencil ...