Hi David,
Unfortunately that feature isnt baked into the IC being used.
Depending on the dev-board being used, you could measure the voltage from the test point on the back - Pico with its inbuilt ADC or Pi an external ADC like this: ADS1015 12-Bit ADC - 4 Channel with Programmable Gain Amplifier | Buy in Australia | ADA1083 | Adafruit | Core Electronics
Hi Liam,
That looks like an interesting device but probably technically above what I can implement.
I am using a Pico and my project currently gets the time from the internet but I’m running into unexplained problem communicating via LORA and I suspect LORA and wifi on the pico are trampling each other.
I have this little RTC working under test but it’s hard to know if it will survive the next power outage and if so for how long. I might think of some creative ways to disable the wifi when not in use instead.
Thanks
David
Hi David,
Do you have some regular Pico’s you can test with, while the Pico W’s WiFi interfering with the LoRa signal is a real issue that could present itself, the connectivity issue may be unrelated. I’ve seen a variety of possible solutions to turn the WiFi off on a Pico W but none that seem reliable, I’d love to see what you find.
Your Pico will have a built in ADC that you can use here, here’s a bit of a crash course in how it works
I do have a regular pico kicking around as well as one of the new ones. Is that a Pico 2. It is non wifi.
However I do think there is something else going on. I have a web page running and the lora stuff runs in a sub process on the other processor core. I am using locking to manage file access but it looks like I may have missed something as it now runs for 10 minutes or so then hangs. More logging required.
Both the regular pico and the Pico 2 don’t have wifi. It was only very recent that the Pico 2 W hit our shelves too. Do you know how much memory you are using on the Pico?
I have memory free space output to my debug log using gc.mem_free()
When the programs starts it shows around 93000
It never seems to go below 80000.
I regularly call Garbage Collection so I don’t think it’s hanging because of a memory issue.
This is probably getting a bit off topic for this thread now.
Hey @David191372,
Sounds like you have an interesting problem on your hands. I would try running your setup and isolate one potential problem source at a time. Turning off locking to see if that makes any noticeable difference seems like the easiest place to start to me. 
I might start a new topic not because I expect other people to solve this for me but people seems quite interested. It’s probably difficult for others to replicate without identical hardware.
If I try and cut the program down to the essence of the problem it simply goes away.
It’s a challenge
After persisting with this device for a number of years (I really wanted it to work) I have replaced it with a battery RTC.
Sometimes it would work, most times not, the time and date returned was random. I was using it on a very simple watering timer to set the date and time if the power went off. I went through a number of software changes to try and make it work.
Sorry to say I cannot recommend this product, it is a good concept but for whatever reason when power is lost the RTC does not keep time properly.
Regards
Jim
I’m sorry to hear about the problem’s that you had with the PiicoDev RTC.
It sounds like after a couple of years, you’ve given it a pretty good length of time testing.
I would be curious to hear if you found any pattern between the length of shutdown time and the ‘randomness’ of the time change. It really should be lasting around a week.
In the beginning it worked and lasted around a week without power. Thought I had a winner.
It was only when there was a power fail, while we were away, and the watering system did not come on, that I started investigating. It happened after the system had been working for well over a year. Power is pretty reliable where I live.
Over time I was unable to establish any correlation between time off and what the date/time was when power came on again. There were times when it would work fine, but recently it failed each time, so I decided it was time to replace it.
The last time it failed, it was 2 days difference and about 10 hours difference. If power is removed for long enough it reverts to the reset date set in the RTC device. So it is sort of working but not keeping time accurately enough.
Regards
Jim
Thanks for detailing your experience, @James46717. Sounds like it is alright for short to medium term projects under a year, but for long lasting projects an Battery RTC would definitely be the winner.
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