How accurate is time()?

Squirrel Code
1

Having done a pair of large LED displays, the next imp project I want to tackle is replacing the PIC on my Nixie Clock. :slight_smile:

All the PIC is doing is keeping time and driving a pair of HV5622 chips: 32-bit shift registers with open-drain outputs.

So the hardware interface is pretty straightforward, but I’m wondering about time(). I know that I’ll need to run my own timers for anything I want to have happen on a sub-second scale, but it’s not clear to me when the RTC in the imp gets set, and how often it’s updated/corrected.

Being the sort of person who has a nixie clock, I’d like it to be fairly accurate, something in the 10’s of ms range. :slight_smile:

Is the RTC in that range, or do I need to do more work on my own to get a good timebase?

2

With software calibration using the server as a source, the Imp can be within 1ms/hour accurate, even without a Wifi connection.

3

You get time() by adding a constant to millis().

4

The RTC is updated on the first connect after a sleep or cold boot. We may well be updating it on all connects in the future, though.

It’s also currently only set to 1s resolution so can be +/-1s (eg: second tick immediately after it’s sent to the imp).

5

Chip-scale atomic clocks are not cheap, even compared to Nixie-tube clocks – but you would get on Slashdot…

Peter

6

@peter-
Probably easier than writing an NTP client in the imp. :slight_smile:

7

No need for an NTP client. Once you have then lose your Wifi connection, the Imp has absolute time within 1ms/hour drift. The code is simple if you’re interested. You can resync as often as you like with a connection. Does shallow sleep keep millis() running? I guess deep sleep does not?

8

@sbright33 - I now have an imp driving running the nixie clock display, so I’d be interested in your high-accuracy clock code.