IFTTT posting events in Google Spreadsheet 5 hours ahead of actual time

Troubleshooting
1

I am using the Particle Asset Tracker and have IFTTT checking events on the Particle Console every Ten Minutes. IFTTT then posts the “event” (Latitude, Longitude, Time and date) on a Spreadsheet in Google docs. I have several questions:

  1. When the event takes place, it shows the accurate time in the Particle Console. This event took place at 3:46 PM as shown in this picture. IFTTT then checks for events as shown in this picture.

However, once IFTTT posts the event into the Google Docs Spreadsheet, it shows the event to have taken place 5 hours ahead of time. In this case, it shows it to be 8:46PM.

Is there a way to rectfify this via the code in the IDE or via IFTTT? If not, does anyone know how to write an excel formula into the IFTTT ingredient for date and time as shown here that would subtract 5 hours from the one posted?

  1. I would like to add a column in the spreadsheet that takes the coordinates and makes them a hyperlink to google maps rather than having to copy and paste the numbers into Maps. Is this possible?

  2. Totally aside from IFTTT, if anyone knows how to take this information from google docs and mash it up real time with google maps, I would be very appreciative. Thanks in advance.

2

The issue is that the timestamp transmitted is UTC and since your browser knows where you live the console code can display that timestamp localised for your timezone.
But IFTTT does not know from where you’ll be viewing the document in future to do the localisation.
If you want the local timestamp in both instances you need to send the localised time as part of the data payload.

2 Likes
3

Thank you. Any tips on how to do that?

4

Since I don’t use IFTTT, I’m not up to speed with their features and can’t really advise - sorry :blush: