What is time.Sync() synchronized to?

We are coordinating our time stamps with other equipment in a lab, and need to know what the source of the time.Sync() is. I understand it comes from particle cloud, but what is particle clouds source? A NIST time server, etc?

Thank you!

Sounds like an @rickkas7 question…

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The cloud servers are time synchronized by NTP, but I don’t know what stratum reference they use. Since the devices aren’t particularly accurate, the RTC has a fairly significant drift of seconds per day unless calibrated, a stratum 1 time reference would not really make a noticeable difference. If you need really, really accurate time you’re better off using a GPS as a time reference.

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Thanks very much @rickkas7. For our purposes NTP should be accurate enough. I appreciate the context and GPS idea.

This is good advice and I just wanted to add that high accuracy RTCs are also available cheaply that might be good enough. You can also run NTP on your device but you can't ask for the time too often without being blacklisted by NTP servers--once a day is good.

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Also an excellent idea. Thanks for the heads up on the black list for those servers!