Just curious to know what people are doing to maintain a somewhat accurate time on the RP4? It looks like the RP4 get’s it’s time from the internet by default. If you’re offline, out in the field, then that isn’t going to work.
You can purchase a realtime clock module add-on for RP4. These seem to plug in to the bus header, which is taken up by the Navigator.
We could set it up to synch to a time server on the top-side computer - but our direction of travel is ideally to dumb down the topside to something like a ruggedised tablet… So not sure if we can do that.
What are people using to get reliable, battery backed, time on the BlueROV2?
Hi Peter -
A RTC has definitely been discussed for future versions of the Navigator, as well as PPS input and Precision Time Protocol support at the kernel level. For users with 4G cellular internet connections (BlueBoat), the NTP time sync you mention is pretty good- as is the time from the GPS. I often dive my BlueROV2 with it having an active internet at the start of, or even the duration of the dive.
With the header occupied, I would think a USB RTC could likely be supported with minimal software effort?