rstrouse
Well-known member
Sounds like you worked your way through it without issue so far. Let me know if you get hung up.
The coin battery is for the Real-Time Clock (RTC) on the BAS card. The reason why this exists is because the Raspberry pi itself does not have one of these on its board. It uses network time protocol (NTC) to keep the time up-to-date. So when the pi boots it sends out a request for the current time and periodically keeps it in sync. Your laptop or PC has a battery that keeps the clock going when there is no power applied to keep the correct time so it there if no network connectivity it will not be frozen in time. This does not exist on the pi without an external power source.
That being said REM does not yet implement the RTC clock for the BAS. We will be adding a watchdog at some point to reset the pi if it detects any hardware or software faults. It will rely on the coin battery to restart the pi after a short period of time. The clock that is powered by that battery will be used to count down the time until the restart. I would suggest you put a coin battery in the holder just in case you want to add this functionality later. It is much easier to do now since the battery may be difficult to get to.
The coin battery is for the Real-Time Clock (RTC) on the BAS card. The reason why this exists is because the Raspberry pi itself does not have one of these on its board. It uses network time protocol (NTC) to keep the time up-to-date. So when the pi boots it sends out a request for the current time and periodically keeps it in sync. Your laptop or PC has a battery that keeps the clock going when there is no power applied to keep the correct time so it there if no network connectivity it will not be frozen in time. This does not exist on the pi without an external power source.
That being said REM does not yet implement the RTC clock for the BAS. We will be adding a watchdog at some point to reset the pi if it detects any hardware or software faults. It will rely on the coin battery to restart the pi after a short period of time. The clock that is powered by that battery will be used to count down the time until the restart. I would suggest you put a coin battery in the holder just in case you want to add this functionality later. It is much easier to do now since the battery may be difficult to get to.