rtc – Real Time Clock

The rtc module provides support for a Real Time Clock. You can access and manage the RTC using rtc.RTC. It also backs the time.time() and time.localtime() functions using the onboard RTC if present.

rtc.set_time_source(rtc: RTC) → None

Sets the RTC time source used by time.localtime(). The default is rtc.RTC, but it’s useful to use this to override the time source for testing purposes. For example:

import rtc
import time

class RTC(object):
    @property
    def datetime(self):
        return time.struct_time((2018, 3, 17, 21, 1, 47, 0, 0, 0))

r = RTC()
rtc.set_time_source(r)

class rtc.RTC

Real Time Clock

This class represents the onboard Real Time Clock. It is a singleton and will always return the same instance.

datetime :time.struct_time

The current date and time of the RTC as a time.struct_time.

This must be set to the current date and time whenever the board loses power:

import rtc
import time

r = rtc.RTC()
r.datetime = time.struct_time((2019, 5, 29, 15, 14, 15, 0, -1, -1))

Once set, the RTC will automatically update this value as time passes. You can read this property to get a snapshot of the current time:

current_time = r.datetime
print(current_time)
# struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_month=5, ...)

calibration :int

The RTC calibration value as an int.

A positive value speeds up the clock and a negative value slows it down. Range and value is hardware specific, but one step is often approximately 1 ppm.