Solar Assistant and RTC

[LeRoyK]

Can a Realtime Clock, be added to a Rasberry Pi that has Solar Assistant installed?
My solar system is offline (no internet), After a power loss I need to remember to go to SA configuration page and reset the time. If I forget to do this then I may be overriding old data with new data and I don't know what is accurate.

I currently have an Orange Pi3 LTS with Solar Assistant preloaded, is it possible to add a RTC like Adafruit PiRTC - Precise DS3231?

 

[400bird]

Great question, not one I've seen asked before.
It really would be a nice feature, especially if the RTC module just plugs into the GPIO header.

I'll bet solar assistance can answer that. Report back if they do answer?

 

[LeRoyK]

Here is the reply that I got from Solar Assistant Support.

Thanks for your patience and understanding while we looked into the matter with the development team. They have looked into the matter and suspect something like this would work, but it depends on if there is any installation or drivers required. If the unit is plug-and-play with the Pi architecture then in theory you could add it to the device and it would work. However, since the timer would require additions to the code base we have added this request to the feature wishlist for the development team to investigate further. If they are able to find a way to implement this code, it will be noted here.

 

[Crowz]

Here you go :

Adding a Real Time Clock to the Raspberry Pi

A tutorial on a Raspberry Pi RTC.

pimylifeup.com

I have my solar assistant setup so I can log into it remotely with a prompt and I also have webmin installed on it so I can work on it via a browser. So this kind of setup is easy.

There are threads on the site here that have info on getting logged into the pi to work on it.

 

[SeaGal]

I have no knowledge or experience with SA but just wondered whether adding a RTC would need any changes to the SA codebase...

Would it not be possible to write a little program that reads the RTC on boot-up which then sets the RPi's internal clock from the RTC _before_ starting SA?

 

[Crowz]

I have no knowledge or experience with SA but just wondered whether adding a RTC would need any changes to the SA codebase...

Would it not be possible to write a little program that reads the RTC on boot-up which then sets the RPi's internal clock from the RTC _before_ starting SA?

Nothing is done with sa software this is all operating system stuff.

That link I posted covers it.

 

[SeaGal]

yes, you beat me to it... I was questioning the OP's reason for asking SA support

 

[LeRoyK]

Thank-You Crowz I will give it a try.