How To: RTC Clock
Real Time Clock (RTC) is a hardware peripheral in the STM32 microcontroller. It is used in scheduler for task planning and also can measure real-time.
You can save date and time into its hardware registers and the clock is running even if you flash it again or reset the processor.
Because the STM32 in the LQFP48 package does not have a battery backup pin, you have to keep connected to at least a single source of power if you would like to keep the RTC counting. So if you need to change the battery module you can keep the Core Module connected over USB to keep the RTC running.
References
RTC Structure
RTC library uses standard C language structure for time.
It contains seconds, minutes, hours, day, month, year. If you read the RTC then the timestamp is filled with the proper UNIX timestamp.
Set Date and Time
This example sets up the RTC to 10.5.2020 18:26:10.
RTC Structure Setup Code Example
struct tm datetime;
datetime.tm_hour = 18;
datetime.tm_min = 26;
datetime.tm_sec = 10;
datetime.tm_mon = 10;
datetime.tm_mday = 5;
datetime.tm_year = 120;
twr_rtc_set_datetime(&datetime, 0);
The year register counts from the year 1900 so if you want to set the year 2020 you should write the value 120 to the tm_year variable.
Year register value 0 stands for 1900 and value 199 stands for 2099.
Get Date and Time
RTC Get Datetime Code Example
struct tm datetime;
twr_rtc_get_datetime(&datetime);
twr_log_debug("$DATE: \"%d-%02d-%02dT%02d:%02d:%02dZ\"", datetime.tm_year, datetime.tm_mon, datetime.tm_mday, datetime.tm_hour, datetime.tm_min, datetime.tm_sec);
To get the exact year in the normal format you can just add 1900 to the value in datetime.tm_year.