Arduino NTP issue for IN-12 Arduino Shield+Adapter+Raspberry Pi Nixie Tubes CLK

[DonZalmrolParticipant]

Hi all,

So yesterday I’ve received my kit and with the default config all is working well. Since I have some Arduino’s and Raspi’s that are not in use I’ve picked the kit that also has the pi shield for the clock kit. This way I can mix around with what would support my needs.

At the moment I’ve hooked the clock PCB to my Arduino Mega 2560 + ESP8266 and it works out-of-the-box with the INO file(s) and libraries from Gra-Afch.

So then I started tweaking and adding an NTP client that uses the ESP8266 wifi capabilities. This works, but something is wrong with my code. After a few minutes (sometimes from the start, sometimes after a minute or sometimes after a little bit longer +- 3minutes) the UDP packets are returned empty. And I have no idea/ clue what could be causing this.

The source I’ve used is this one and then I started adding DST to it, with or without my DST code its the same.

I’m new to Arduino, so its high likely a beginner error.
Code is on my Github, I’ve tried saving/ preserving as much of the original code as possible, there is even the option to enable/ disable the NTP and use the GPS again.

Would highly appreciate it if someone could help me out 🙂

• This topic was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by  DonZalmrol.

[DonZalmrolParticipant]

Screenshot: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RFTbuxxkNdk7MhseVxAiCaDOahn-5l38/view

As you can see the UDP package size drops from 48 (What it should be for NTP) to 0 and then after a while the WifiESP gets a timeout followed by a Data packet send error.

What happens then is that the clock sets its NTP to 1970 (default UNIX time) or messes up the DST (jumping +1 or +2) or even displaying a completely different date from who knows where…

If it’s a known issue with the NTP udp packages on Arduino, could I fetch this and create an exception e.g try-catch-finally?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by  DonZalmrol.

[mcpgzaParticipant]

Hello,

I created my esp firmware using esphome, it has integrated NTP client which works like charm, handles local time for example, and has a lot of useful features such as monitoring, logging, mini webserver, and firmware update over the air. I wrote a simple custom component which communicates with the Arduino, and provides the ntp clock for the nixie clock through the integrated serial.

[DonZalmrolParticipant]

Hi, do you have a link to your firmware and more information about this? 🙂

[mcpgzaParticipant]

Not yet, but I will publish at the weekend.
More info about esphome: https://esphome.io/

[DonZalmrolParticipant]

Ah fantastic looking forward for other solutions/ insights.
Do you experience any other issues regarding your NTP solution?

[DonZalmrolParticipant]

I was able to create my own NTP sync with the help from this source: https://medium.com/@joeldavidw/nixie-clock-ntp-sync-remote-switch-4b6ad7b686d

I then improved the code and added some failsafes e.g. when no internet connection is there or the UDP package size is not 48, … it retries to fetch the NTP and if that fails after 3 consecutive tries it goes over to GPS

My code can be viewed/ downloaded from my GitHub page: https://github.com/DonZalmrol/GRA-AFCH-IN-12-Arduino-Nixie-clock-kit-with-NTP

Cheers!

[ZwartoogParticipant]

@DonZalmrol: did you check the NTP code in this package?
http://sebastiaanbreedveld.nl/other/nixie/NixieClockWeatherStation.zip

I also made some updates to the NTP code there.

[DonZalmrolParticipant]

Hi Zwartoog,

Yes, I’ve looked at your code and we have certainly some similarities in our code.
Mine seems to be working stable at the moment.

I will probably use some of your code for a CPM sensor display 😉

Thx!

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