QLC+ play nice with real time clock on Pi2

[Chris Laurie]

I aim to use the Pi2 as the controller in our clubhouse theatre. There is no internet connection there and so I purchased the piface real time clock to give me correct time in the virtual console.

There are 2 problems with this. It seems the scripts for the RTC is not run when the QLC+ is loaded. If I go to the command line, log in as root and type date (or hwclock), then shutdown and return to qlcplus then QLC+ does show the correct time. The question is where can I add what piece of script to make sure the real time clock init is use.

Secondly, if there is a internet connection, then qlc+ will read from some ntp server and override the time setting. The problem here is that the ntp server picks up UTC while I am in UTC+2 time zone. I suspect I am asking where I set up my timezone on the Pi2.

piface site: http://www.piface.org.uk/products/piface_clock/#
git scripts:https://github.com/piface/PiFace-Real-Time-Clock

[Massimo Callegari]

The question is where can I add what piece of script to make sure the real time clock init is use.

/etc/rc.local

The problem here is that the ntp server picks up UTC while I am in UTC+2 time zone. I suspect I am asking where I set up my timezone on the Pi2.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4977

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/110522/timezone-setting-in-linux

More likely these are generic Linux questions ;)

[Chris Laurie]

Thanks for your response and apologies (and in advance) I suspect that with the R-Pi QLC+, essentially a distribution it is not always simple for me to see where the linux questions end and the QLC+ questions start.

But, this is how we learn...

[Massimo Callegari]

No problem Chris.
I chose Debian Wheezy on purpose to stick to a super standard RPi distro and because you can find a lot of information about it around.
QLC+ is simply a process like any other in the image. The only thing I had to do was to force the service to startup at boot in /etc/rc.local

Apart for that...super standard :)

[Massimo Callegari]

Oh, by the way, I've always wondered how a RTC module worked, so thanks for sharing the confirmation that it works OK :)

[Chris Laurie]

It works fine now. The problem was that the start qlcplus happened before the initialisation code of the RTC. Moved the qlcplus line to below and it is fine.

This begs another question: how do I "protect" these customisations of the r-pi environment? Currently we mostly upgrade by means of an image, which will wipe any custom code and settings, including time-zone.