hey UST_,
1) Edison is my first shot at embedded, I selected it because it was a dual core Intel atom processor with a quark (Pentium) mcu with a Linux OS To me this meant, I could use the same tools I was use to programming Intel CPUs with. I use the mini breakout board. I've never used Arduino, so I don't have that experience to relate to, and eclipse is, less than I desired, I didn't want to have to learn another language or another IDE - (just my personal preferences). I like that edison has that flexibility.
2) for native language, I am personally programming in pascal using Kylix3, and some C using gcc - giving me the elf Linux format executables I need. I accomplish much over ssh and an onboard editor and compile right on Edison.
3) My understanding was that the network time already updates the RTC, so when I boot, initiate the wifi connection, the time updates to the OS automatically, and I simply ask Linux to give me the time (which for me is in UTC). Kylix gives me datetime as a float value, the integer part in days since Dec 30 1899, and the fractional part of the days.
For seconds today as integer x := trunc( fract (datetime) *86400);
A formatted string s := FormatDateTime('YYYYMMDD.HHMMSS',now);
4) the question is how do you interface with the OS to run a system commands or executables in Arduino.
if you can tie into the gcc functions: (where gcc is already included in the Edison image)
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>
void main() {
time_t t = time(NULL);
struct tm tm = *localtime(&t);
// if you need as an integer;
int secondstoday = tm.tm_hour*3600+tm.tm_min*60+tm.tm_sec;
// when you need to print it as string
printf("%04d%02d%02d:%02d%02d%02d\n",tm.tm_year+1900,tm.tm_mon+1,tm.tm_mday,tm.tm_hour,tm.tm_min,tm.tm_sec);
// when you need to print it as an integer
printf("%d\n",secondstoday);
}
put that in a file testtime.c
gcc -o testtime testtime.c
./testtime
tm has the structure for your time elements year, month, day, hour, min, sec
Although Kylix has functions for me, in a worst case pickle, I'd be able to call libc.System(PChar('./testtime > tmpfile'));
and then read an executable's output from the tmpfile -- I imagined Arduino has to have something of the same.
-- I now understand that arduino has a system("commandlinetorun");
Update: after the network time has updated the system time you can push that to the rtc using the command line hwclock --systohc.
after that you can check on your rtc status by reading the file /proc/driver/rtc using cat /proc/driver/rtc