CTC time problem after power loss

I have a colour touch screen from 2008.
Recently it is losing time after a power loss.
I suspect the onboard battery.
Has anyone changed one and do you remember the cell type?
Thanks

 

Since you are running a copy of cgate on a pi you could just set it as a time master (its a config option) and get it to broadcast the time every 10 minutes or so. Assuming of course that the pi is connected to the internet and has a time server enabled.

 

Thanks
Does the battery provide any other benefit for reliable operation of the Touch screen to boot etc?

 

No idea. Given the touch screen runs embedded xp I assume it has some sort of bios that may be maintained by the battery, but I think you need the other Ashleigh for that one

 

@ashleigh
@Ashley
Thanks
Will give CIS a call this week and see if they know the cell type.

As far as I can see the Colour Touch has no connection to an internet time server?
If so I don't know how it kept time for so many years.
Perhaps the occasional visit to transfer some changes was enough to keep it close.
The customer is unlikely to have made changes through the settings page.

Maybe I should give the task over to CGate anyway?
Does this sound correct.

clock.master=yes
clock.mastermode=primary

 

@NickD
Thanks Nick
I was onsite to setup Homebridge CBus.
The customer mentioned the CTC clock reset to 2004 after a recent power outage.
I will change the CTC battery but still might have a go at using CGate as the time master.

The home has a Colour Touch and "Clipsal Homegate" running on a headless Windows PC.
The logic and schedules are running only on the Homegate PC.

For now I will keep the remote PC on site running Homegate but point it to CGate on the pi.

 

That's a thought.
If the PC is running I may as well leave the CGate there.

 

Homegate on the PC is doing one job right now and that is running the logic for a Coolmaster AC interface.
Thanks again @djaggar I still think it is magic.
I could move it to the touch screen but that is in a long list of jobs not done.
I'm hoping one day soon Coolmaster will release a standalone Homekit AC bridge.

Remote operation is not a customer requirement.
Of course it makes sense to keep that as an option though.

There is a few reasons why I even considered letting the pi run CGate.
For one I wanted to test the stability of CGate for long term use on the pi in conjunction with Homebridge CBus and Apple Home app for some voice control.

Right now the Touch screen does handle a lot of lighting groups which do not have key inputs.
It's a big home but I'm very proud of the simplicity of the setup.
There is only 1 gang and 2 gang key inputs for the whole home.
Mostly 1 gang.
There is an extensive amount of outdoor spot lights and fans etc which can only be operated by the touch screen though.
Also things like disabling motion sensors, boosting solar hot water etc.
If the Touch screen died it would be a problem.
The CTC has been super reliable but since it is no longer available as a spare I'm considering future options.

Keeping time for the last 8 years has never really been much of a problem.
I'm sure it has been the best clock in the house and I'm hoping a new CR2032 will keep it that way for a few more years.

 

Glad to know it wasn't just me. I tried it myself the other day and couldn't get it to work. Was on my list to post the question.

 

Apologies for dredging this up, but this still seems broken to me. My C-Gate (for homebridge) install on a pi never sets the cbus network. If I understand the logs, clock updates are only ever emitted by the PAC, which drifts a lot. I just discovered by 10pm holiday mode has been happening at 2am, for example.

 

Following up for future readers, this seems to be resolvable by running cronjob at suitable intervals (every 5 minutes in my example) to set the cbus network time to the local system time:

*/5 * * * * echo "CLOCK TIME //networkname/254/223 `date +\%H:\%M:\%S`" | netcat -N -w 0 localhost 20023

where network name is as required for your installation etc.

 

I like this one - so simple!
Years ago, I had a RPi running C-Gate in my unit as an interface with Command Fusion software. There was a python script that used to run after the RPi restarted, scrape the time and date then broadcast it across the network. This solution looks so much tidier.

 

Thanks. Makes me wonder why it only took me 7+ years since I noticed it to do something about it! I guess because we don't go on holiday much

 

Hi All,
Colour CTC's use a button battery, the CTC1 is soldered onto the main PCB, the CTC2 has it in a cell holder, the CTC3 uses the same cell battery but it has a wired connector that plugs into the main PCB.
You can swap the cell in the holder (CTC2) , solder the wires from the old battery (CTC3). Only 4 screws to get access to them.
The CTC1 is soldered to the PCB, but can also be changed, the ground pin is the hardest, the PCB has 4 layers of copper sinking the heat from it.
They all use a standard 3volt CR2032 or BR2032 button cell battery.

regards
Trevor

 

And for the Windows users out there, you can use task scheduler to run a batch script very easily.

Install ncat (https://nmap.org/ncat/) then create a batch scipt as below.

@echo off
for /f "tokens=2 delims==" %%a in ('wmic OS Get localdatetime /value') do set "dt=%%a"
set "YY=%dt:~2,2%" & set "YYYY=%dt:~0,4%" & set "MM=%dt:~4,2%" & set "DD=%dt:~6,2%"
set "HH=%dt:~8,2%" & set "Min=%dt:~10,2%" & set "Sec=%dt:~12,2%" & set "MS=%dt:~15,3%"
set "datestamp=%YYYY%-%MM%-%DD%"
echo CLOCK DATE //networkname/254/223 %datestamp% | ncat 127.0.0.1 20023


If your time creeps you can use this one:

for /f "tokens=2 delims==" %%a in ('wmic OS Get localdatetime /value') do set "dt=%%a"
set "YY=%dt:~2,2%" & set "YYYY=%dt:~0,4%" & set "MM=%dt:~4,2%" & set "DD=%dt:~6,2%"
set "HH=%dt:~8,2%" & set "Min=%dt:~10,2%" & set "Sec=%dt:~12,2%" & set "MS=%dt:~15,3%"
set "datestamp=%YYYY%-%MM%-%DD%"
set "timestamp=%HH%:%Min%:%Sec%"
echo CLOCK TIME //networkname/254/223 %timestamp% | ncat 127.0.0.1 20023

Thanks so much cmlp