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Having had surprisingly many power outages in the past few weeks I've noticed that the OpenEVSE won't resync the time after the power returns. Whether this is because it syncs at a much later time and I'm too impatient, I don't know.

If (as long as time sync is set to "automatic" the charger resynchronised it's time every day at 12:05am, it would mean that five minutes after power-up (when it'll have gone back to midnight at whatever date it says it is, I can't remember) it'll resynchronise. Perhaps this would even go so far as to render the backup battery redundant?

On boot-up what should be happening is NTP failures sets TIME_POLL_TIME to 1 minute period( 60*1000 ) and on success sets it to 8 hours( 8*60*60*1000). It would also be nice of NTP failures get logged so when an NTPD server is set and it fails we can see it in the log and maybe why it failed(server not found, network connection failure, etc ).

I have some other things going on with the openEVSE wifi firmware because even when it is online(on my network) my network does not show it in the client list.  It's currently disconnecting almost daily and I have to force my network to use a different Wireless Access Point to get it connected again even when the other WAP is on the other side of the house. Today I changed my DHCP setting for that device from ALWAYS to lease expiration of 1 hour to see if that type of disconnecting forces on-line stability.

OK. Well, I did say "I suspect". :-)  

That was just based on my observation that it didn't update the time on it's own even after many weeks, but immediately did so upon rebooting the WiFi. I'll move my observations to GitHub.

Thanks.

@Doug LaRue What I'm trying to understand is how you are accomplishing manual time setting. I see nothing that would do that or allow for either receiving the time from the browser or typing in the time by hand. 

Also, it's not that the NTP settings are being forgotten. I suspect the root of the problem is that the time is set ONLY when the WiFi service/daemon is started up, and it is possible the time check is attempted before the WiFi connection is fully established. When house power goes down the network in general can take up to 2 minutes before being fully ready. The OpenEVSE boots up much faster than that, and if it never checks for the time server again, it will never set the time. 

In my case, either I don't have an internal battery backup to maintain the time, or the battery has died, so the time is always reset to "0". As luck would have it, I had a brief power outage just this morning. Of course the time was reset, but I logged back in, went to Settings -> Firmware and rebooted the WiFi (NOT the whole device). The time was then set correctly, so it was NOT a firewall or network issue. You should try that too and report back.

I'm including this information in case any of the developers see to it to set up either a delayed time check on boot. What would the harm be to wait 300 seconds after boot to check on the time? Alternatively, have it check periodically. Once a day wouldn't hurt either. Either one of those would certainly fix the issue I am having. 

@Erich Hammer

1. manual mode as in setting time from the browser... manually setting the time instead of going off in the background and getting time from an NTP server somewhere. Might be called Local but figured people would understand.

2. I literally rebooted the OpenEVSE device,, not just software controlled reboot but depowering the whole device and powering up. I don't recall if I've ever tried to just restart the onboard WiFi unit. Who on Earth would setup a system which remembers WiFi SSID and network connections but does not remember network time settings because when a power outage happens is it really expected of people to then go in and restart just the Wifi so that the time/date is set?  But if the coders never intended to have network time and relied on RTC and then when RTC hardware was removed and NTP added... 

 @Doug LaRue 

1. What do you mean by "I switched to manual"? I see nothing to that effect in the settings. 
2. You aren't making a distinction between rebooting the entire unit and rebooting just the unit WiFi (NOT the house Wifi). (Look in the "Firmware" panel/tab.) Please clarify. Just for reference, my time was "fixed" when I rebooted the unit WiFi. 

You say:

Most NTP issues are firewall issues.

 Is that because the default firewall for many/most/some home routers prevents access to NTP servers? 

If that is not the case, then it is unlikely that the firewall is the issue (for me anyway) because I certainly haven't modified the firewall of my network. I would argue that 99% of home networks have default firewall settings, which would mean that "most NTP issues" occur within the remaining 1%. 

If default firewall settings are likely the issue, there should definitely be some documentation to that effect with at least some basic info on what modifications to a default firewall should occur. 

Finally, I poked around some more and for some strange reason, when I rebooted the OpenEVSE WiFi this time (and I had definitely done it previously), the time did set itself. I had tried several other NTP servers, but I believe it is on the same original one (pool.ntp.org). 

I would suggest that as the most basic and easiest step to help with this, the "Time" panel in the OpenEVSE GUI should have a note like, "If your time isn't correct, try restarting the OpenEVSE WiFi in the 'Firmware' panel."

Thanks!

IMO the green "check" it shows means nothing but I've not followed the code. What have done so many times is set the ntp server, see the check show green and don't see any time change. Then I've rebooted and didn't see any time update/change.  I would ONLY see a time change when I switched to manual and then it would repeatedly show the correct time until a reboot and then it was back to Epoch zero day/hour.

The wifi setup on OpenEVSE has really sucked for me. Besides the ntpd stuff I've not had access to my opense-xxxx.local address for days because it periodicallly goes offline, doesn't present a local WAP and I have to go into my router to tell it to switch to one of the other routers in the mesh, often at the back of the house just to get it to reconnect. Otherwise I have to go out and throw the breaker and restart the OpenEVSE device to get it to connect to WiFi.

It's not been fun but when it is working, it's made charging our Leaf and other EVs much easier since we can set exactly how many kWh to give them in order to get to 80% SOC.

I can't say that it is definitely not the firewall, but all the other devices in my house connected through the same router don't have any issues with knowing the time after power outages. 

I posed my question because of the posts just a month about by @MikeK and @DougLaRue about using "manual update mode"/"manual time entry". If that hasn't been around for 5+ years, what are they talking about?

What is the meaning of the green check that appears when the NTP server is changed? Is that just to say it has been updated, or that the NTP server has been pinged and is reachable? 

I know when I have troubleshoot my network, rebooting the cable modem can take a couple minutes, and the router isn't particularly fast about establishing a connection either. Thus, if the OpenEVSE only checks time on boot, it very well might not be able to reach the NTP at that time. 

It seems to me that having a button in the time interface to update time on demand would be both useful and easy to implement. It would also allow folks like me who aren't sure about their firewall to at least update the time even if it is manual. 

I should add that when I put in a time server and hit enter, a green checkmark briefly appears. I would assume that means it has checked that it can reach the server. Is that not the case? 

I am also not getting time updates. I have no idea how long it has been like that as I don't check it often, but it currently says it is February 7, 1970. 

I'd change it to "manual", but I don't see that option. Is it in the web interface somewhere? 

Thanks!

Thanks @MikeK for confirming I'm not crazy. :-)  As for it getting the correct time when you clicked on Manual update mode, well that pulls the time from your browser which pulls it from the computer you are running the browser on. There is definitely something weird going on with the NTP section of the WiFi firmware because not only does it sometimes not get NTP time, it doesn't do it on reboot sometimes and it doesn't periodically get it nor log that it's having problems getting the time.

I had even setup a ntpd time server on a local computer and it wouldn't pull time from it but after changing my Wifi AP on the OpenEVSE to test if a moble WAP helped, once changing it back to my home WAP it started working and even worked across a forced reboot.

I've got my WAP only 20' away from my OpenEVSE but around a couple of corners yet for some reason my OpenEVSE would drop offline and never reconnect. I've made some setting changes in my WAP specifically for the OpenEVSE device like setting only 2.4GHz and running a channel optimiation routine.

It's a more serious bug when things like your scheduled charge doesn't happen and you're left with a car that can't get you to work and back or something like that.