Time difference between cloud and photon

Troubleshooting
1

Hello everyone,

I have an issue with time being synced to the cloud. I’ve got a simple program to control some relays based on what hour of the day (in 24 hour format) but the photon seems to be on a different time zone setting.

As an example, when I publish the time via the following code:

Particle.publish(“Time is now:”, Time.timeStr());

I get a response that it is “2:48” when in fact my local time is 6:48pm
I have tried calling Time.syncTime() to sync to the cloud time, but it doesn’t fix the issue.
Everything on my cloud console displays my correct local time, but is there a way to adjust it on the cloud side - I’m thinking there is a user preference on the cloud console for time zone but I cannot find it?

I also tried using Time.Set to manually set it to the current time, but it does not seem to stick.

Finally, I have tried resetting the power to the board, power cycled, etc.

I have already adjusted my program to compensate for this issue, but after playing around with arduino’s and RTC’s I was ready for something a little more…robust, so I’m hoping to find a solution that works.

Thanks in advance!

2

You need to set the time zone (offset in hours from GMT) for you location using Time.zone(). Do this before calling any of the other Time functions.

Time.zone(-8); // for Pacific Standard Time, for instance
3

That worked perfectly, and funnily enough I was about to try that function just to see if it would work!

Thanks for your help, Ric.