RTC - any way to get a time stamp to the camera?

Hi,

Is there a convenient way to directly connect an RTC (like a DS3231) to the camera board?

I’d like to be able to timestamp April Tag readings and log the result to the SD card, but it seems clunky to have to attach an entire Arduino just to do this. The micropython libraries discuss pyb.RTC() but these throw an Attribute Error at compile time, and without a battery I’m not sure how this would work anyway.

Thanks!

You should just connect an I2C RTC to the camera and talk to the RTC via that. Or a SPI RTC. I2C would be the easiest. SparkFun sells a simple I2C RTC.

The RTC built-in to the processor is not enabled.

Ah, no extra processer is needed? Perfect, I’ll try that. Thanks!

Hi, the RTC will be enabled in the next release (you can build from source if you like, search the forums on how to do that) so you won’t need an RTC. Note the RTC is supplied from VDD or VBAT (which is connected to VDD) so as long as you keep the power supply connected, the RTC will keep working just fine. In the next release I plan to implement low power modes as well, this should be useful in RTC applications.