Not sure if this is the right place to post, but upon receiving my Playdate unit I selected to set the time Automatically which, for a time, was accurate to the minute but upon further inspection the internal clock seems to be off by a handful of seconds to the actual local time.
The manual time setting is missing a seconds feature too, so the unit seems to be stuck perpetually 20 seconds slow or 40 seconds early depending on which minute I set it at (naturally).
Potentially the seconds are logged as of when the unit is initialized so each person's Playdate might have a slightly different internal time, but overall I think for those neurotic folks like myself we should have the feature to set the time to the second.
Again sorry if this is the wrong place to post but let me know your thoughts!
In my experience, the Playdate clock gains a minute or so per day. It's not a high-end crystal oscillator. Don't expect it to be accurate the the second.
But mine rarely (if ever) gets more than two minutes ahead, even when left for days, because it re-syncs time with the network periodically. (When Playdate first came out it would drift more—but now it seems to correct itself more often.)
For that correction to happen, you must be on WiFi with time set to Automatic.
You can also manually sync by toggling Automatic off and back on. At that time, I have found it DOES set the seconds accurately. The minute changes at the same moment as my Apple Watch. (At first.)
If you see the time being off by hours, something is wrong!
I made the Playtime clocks collection on Catalog, and I've let my Playdate sit for days running my own clocks, and also running the system sleep clock. In neither case does the time drift very far. But it IS often a minute fast. About the same as my car....
Quick question, but does it also automatically set the time while in a game as well?
So for example, letting the playdate sit in a game for days would still auto correct itself?
I don't have official word, and it definitely didn't used to do that in the beginning. But my guess is that maybe it does now? That could be the reason for it not drifting as much anymore.
My Playtime clocks are an app that runs the same as any game (but preventing sleep when plugged into power so the default sleep clock never takes over) and I have left it running for days and days with only a couple minutes drift at most.
Letting the Playdate sleep (lock) button every now and then is ideal anyway. MAYBE for time checks, but also for updates and season download checks. Those things happen when the playdate has been asleep for a certain amount of time.
The time should indeed update periodically while the Playdate is locked, whether a game is running or not.
I don't feel like the clock should be drifting this much though, so we'll take a look into what might be going on and if there is anything we can do to fix it.
Same problem here. Mine is actually losing a couple of hours per day like it is not updating regularly. I understand if it must hibernate during the lock time, but I expect it to be correct when connected to the Wi-Fi. If it is of some help, my unit should be from the latest batch as it came two days ago. Let me know if I can provide further details.
Any updates about this bug? Can I provide some info to help?
I know this is not a breaking issue, but it's annoying and does not reflect the overall care for the details you put on your product.
Just want to chime in that I also have been experiencing similar issues. I synced my clock at 3:07, and now at 3:27 PM it's already off by a few minutes, reading 3:24. Over the course of a day it's off by a few hours.
FWIW, although I have not received any reports from users of my Playtime clocks app, I have continued to see a few reports around social media/Mastodon of larger-than-expected time drifts like this, in the last month or so. (It doesn't seem to be universal, and it doesn't seem to be normal/expected.)
I finally got hold of a device with extreme clock drift. Looks like the clock is only shifting while it's in clock mode, doesn't drift at all if I turn off auto-sleep and leave it on a power supply. (And I have the network disabled, so it's not syncing there..) Does this match what y'all are seeing? If that's consistent then I should be able to have it count how much time is spent sleeping and come up with an adjustment the next time it gets the correct time from the server. The question then is whether the slippage is at a fixed, computable rate, or if it changes over time.
Hi Dave, sorry for the late response; I was hoping that someone with more knowledge would reply. What do you mean when you are talking about "clock mode" or "auto-sleep"? I tried looking for a deep sleep option, but the only one I have is an "auto lock" that moves to the clock visualization followed by the double tap on the power button to wake up. In my case, there is no difference in drift when charging.
Let me know on the "clock mode" Vs. "auto sleep" so I can check that too.
Sleep and clock mode are the same thing. There's always a clock during sleep, whether sleep is initiated by the lock button or automatically after a time.
Ok, thank you, I finally understood and tried what @dave was proposing. I can confirm that if I switch off Auto Lock while charging, my unit does not drift while charging unlocked.
Just a quick (and disappointing) followup on this: It looks like the rate of drift isn't consistent enough that we can compensate for it in code. There's enough variability there that the clock would be not very useful as a clock. If you're still having problems with clock drift, please contact support about getting a replacement unit: Email us for help. - Playdate Help