question

Eli Hunter avatar image
Eli Hunter asked

Node-Red timezone

I thought it might be helpful for others in the Venus OS extended image I found time based flows were all in UTC time even though I set the time zone in the Venus menu. i ended up linking my timezone to /etc/localtime from the command line and time worked as expected in Node-Red after a reboot. Might be good for Victron developers to make this link when the timezone is set in the Venus interface?


Update:

I've changed this to set the timezone in Node-Red instead of setting system wide

edit ~/.node-red/settings.js and this right above the module.exports = { line

process.env.TZ = 'America/Los_Angeles';


Node-RED
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3 Answers
jeroen avatar image
jeroen answered ·

No, that is not a good idea to set in general, since it is system-wide setting. That will make debugging really hard.. if the logs etc are in the local time zone, vrm webserver has its own time zone and the database has its own timezone, and the user his browser has its own timezone.

Instead everything is in UTC, until it is shown to the end user. So the environmental variable TZ should be set instead for node-red I guess.

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Eli Hunter avatar image Eli Hunter commented ·

Thanks Jeroen, I've updated the post to set this in Node-Red settings.js instead so it's not system wide. It didn't seem to affect log timestamps in VRM but definitely safer this way.

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mrhappy avatar image
mrhappy answered ·

I did this, and now node-red can not read the settings file, what do I have to do to correct it?


*** Starting node-red ***

Error loading settings file: /home/root/.node-red/settings.js

root@raspberrypi2:~# cd /home/root/.node-red/

root@raspberrypi2:~/.node-red# ls -la settings.js

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 12305 Sep 5 06:54 settings.js



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mrhappy avatar image mrhappy commented ·
Update: I deleted the settings file altogether and node-red started up. Luckily I had exported my flow so I could import it again....
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mrhappy avatar image mrhappy commented ·

Updating again for anyone who might have the problem in my above post, as I have succeeded to set the node-red time-zone as described but with a minor difference.

Firstly, when the problem was created, I had edited the settings with nano while ssh'ed into the RasPi. This time instead, I used the command "scp" to copy the file to my computer, edit it and then send it back with that command.

Secondly, in the end of the line in the instruction as per @Eli Hunter, there is a semicolon. I changed that to just a comma, as that is what the rest of the file seems to have in the ends of their instruction-lines.

Restarted venusOS through the console and violá, the time in node-red is correct.

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image
mvader (Victron Energy) answered ·

Hi all, FYI: the next Venus OS large build fixes this issue; and links the node-red timezone to the timezone configured in the GX UI.

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Mark avatar image Mark ♦♦ commented ·
Excellent!
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jonoci avatar image jonoci commented ·
Except that is does not on my system....I have posted the issue but no response yet.. Setting GX date/time to Africa ( GMT+2) makes no difference in Node Red - all timing nodes still trigger only on set time as UTC time, ie, if set to 08H00 ( I want a trigger at 08H00 in the morning, at home, local time = GMT+2) , it triggers on 10H00 at my place, local time. I have to set all time nodes to - 2 hours for things to work...
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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) avatar image Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ jonoci commented ·

The only caveat on this is that you need to restart Node-RED after you have altered the timezone on the GX device, before Node-RED will pick it up.

Just did a quick test on my system (set to Europe/Amsterdam), with the inject node triggering at 10:28 and all seems to work as expected.

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