Real Time Clock RTC

Adding a RTC to the Hive Interface board version 0.3. (Skip the first section, Hardware, if using version 1.0 of the interface board as these modifications have been added to the board.)

• 

  DS3231 RTC

• 

  Installed on a Pi

• 

  Installed on Hive Interface Board

DS3231

Hardware

alt Modified H2

This module almost plugs in to H2 (the I2C bus) on version 0.3 of the Hive Interface board. A minor modification is required on version 0.3 interface boards. This modification was incorporated into later versions. As +5 VDC is not used and the ground must be shifted down a pin:

1. The ground on C3 must be moved.
2. To be safe, the 4th pin of a 1x5 male header should be removed.
3. Solder the 1x5 header in H2 BUT SHIFT IT DOWN ONE PIN.

Old H2 I2C Bus		New H2 for RTC
Pin	Signal	New Pin
1	+5	No connect
2	+3.3	Pin 1 of H2
3	I2C	Pin 2 of H2
4	I2C	Pin 3 of H2
5	Ground	No connect
Ground for C	Ground	Pin 5 of H2

Software

These instructions have recently been updated and work well:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adding-a-real-time-clock-to-raspberry-pi/overview

The hwclock is read on boot. When the ntp servers are available, the system time is synced to them and the system time is written to the hwclock every 11 minutes. From the hwclock man page:

Automatic Hardware Clock Synchronization By the Kernel 
 You  should be aware of another way that the Hardware Clock is kept synchronized in some systems.  The Linux kernel has a mode wherein it copies the System Time to the Hardware Clock every 11 minutes.  This is a good mode to use when you are using something sophisticated like ntp to keep your System Time  synchronized.  (ntp is a way to keep your System Time synchronized either to a time server somewhere on the network or to a radio clock hooked up to your system.  See RFC 1305).

 This mode (we'll call it "11 minute mode") is off until something turns it on.  The ntp daemon xntpd is one thing that turns it on.  You can turn it off by running anything, including hwclock --hctosys, that sets the System Time the old fashioned way.

Turn on I2C

Command Line

sudo raspi-config 

Select

5 Interfacing Options 

Select

P5 I2C

and enable it.

Install software

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-smbus i2c-tools

This wasn't necessary as they were both already installed and the latest version in the 0.7.4 image.

Edit /boot/config.txt. Add:

#enable RTC DS3231 module
dtoverlay=i2c-rtc,ds3231

Edit /lib/udev/hwclock-set and comment out these three lines:

#if [ -e /run/systemd/system ] ; then
# exit 0
#fi