Setting time manually without internet
All our IoT devices are firewalled from the internet so they don't leak or accidentally upgrade and lose features (I'm looking at you, Bambu). Network time can't be reached.
How do I set the time manually?
Vik :v)
RE:
You can't set the time on the MK4 manually. What works is setting up a WiFi hotspot on a mobile device, activating the WiFi on the MK4, connecting it to your hotspot for a few seconds until the time on the printer's display is set via NTP. Then you can turn off the WiFi on the MK4 and also the hotspot on your mobile device. You should change the password for the hotspot to a short one or no password for this to simplify the process on the MK4. Entering the password via the encoder wheel is an awkward process. Afterwards you can set the password back to a long and more secure one.
RE: Setting time manually without internet
Right, will try. Might just fire up an NTP server behind the firewall.
RE: Setting time manually without internet
Android has deprecated PublicNTP so I VPN'd a phone connection. Set it back to ethernet.
Why bother? One simple example of many: if a bad actor spots NTP time requests suddenly stopping from a device like a 3D printer, they know the user has likely turned it off to go on holiday...
RE: Setting time manually without internet
I was able to change it directly on the printer. It is under settings. But you need to know what your GMT offset is.
RE: Setting time manually without internet
I do not agree with @pfa-2. You can not set the hours and minutes to the correct time from the printer display panel.
RE: Setting time manually without internet
Correct. It does not allow you to set the hours and minutes and it the setting is manual, as in it does not set directly from the Internet. But I was able to Google the GMT offset for my location, and input that into the control panel on the printer. It now displays the correct time for my area. Is this what you meant? Or am I missing something else?
I would prefer it just set automatically. This process did feel a little like setting the clock on an old VCR or the microwave oven, but it did the trick.
RE:
I think your printer must have been connected to the internet at some point, and it got the correct time then. I did that with my printer when I first got it. Since then I've disconnected it, and my time has been slowly drifting off. It's about 15 minutes off now, and unless I reconnect to the internet I can't fix it. It has nothing to do with the GMT offset. That will always change the time in one hour increments.
RE: Setting time manually without internet
Gotcha. Yeah mine is whole hour. No drift so far. We'll see.
RE:
Which NTP is the MK4 querying? I need to know because I have to file a request for our FW dept here. I have no means to sniff this, and Prusa did not give us an interface to either look up the NTP setting or change it, or set the time manually 🙁 Prusa, please take note to enhance this in the next firmware release, thanks.
RE: Setting time manually without internet
195.113.115.238
Probably need to ask the support team to add the NTP configuration syntax to the following KB for a static IP configuration. I had to allow an exception in my firewall for UDP 123
https://help.prusa3d.com/article/how-to-set-a-static-ip-address_695648
RE: Setting time manually without internet
... connected to the internet at some point, and it got the correct time then.
I never connected my printer (MK4), yet at some point it started showing time (I think it didn't at first, and I don't remember when it started, probably after a firmware update). It is exactly one hour ahead of correct time (that is, 1h and 1m). How did it get to know the roughly correct time in the first place if it was never connected to anything (I only ever used the USB flash)?
RE: Setting time manually without internet
The mainboard (Buddy board) of the MK4 has a real time clock on it. That is what the little coin battery is for. It is not very exact and will drift off after some time. The clock on my MK4 is about one minute fast per month. If you connect the printer to the internet, it will self-correct the time via the NTP protocol.
RE: Setting time manually without internet
Yes, I guessed that it has some kind of a clock inside. But I'm wondering how did it set itself if it never was connected to internet?
RE: Setting time manually without internet
Probably it was set in the factory during the initial testing? You have seen the ticket with the testing results in the box of the new printer, right?
RE: Setting time manually without internet
I doubt that. First, because this ticket itself doesn't bear a timestamp, only the date of testing. Second, because my clock is still not active, I never get a result, an estimate WHEN a print might finish. Regarding NTP: Probably true, but I cannot see (or change) the NTP adress that the printer polls. NTP servers are not all equally good, therefore our company ethernet has it's own NTP server infrastructure. Which I cannot access without access to that setting 🙁
RE: Setting time manually without internet
I doubt that. First, because this ticket itself doesn't bear a timestamp, only the date of testing. Second, because my clock is still not active, I never get a result, an estimate WHEN a print might finish. Regarding NTP: Probably true, but I cannot see (or change) the NTP adress that the printer polls. NTP servers are not all equally good, therefore our company ethernet has it's own NTP server infrastructure. Which I cannot access without access to that setting 🙁
RE: Setting time manually without internet
Probably it was set in the factory during the initial testing? You have seen the ticket with the testing results in the box of the new printer, right?
Possible. I can't reliably remember, but I think at first the clock wasn't set, only later showed up.
However it started, it will drift over time, so it would be good to be able to ocassionaly set it manually without connecting to internet.
RE:
It's not set in the factory. Mine still shows "NV" (localized for not available), because I cannot give it the address of our NTP server, the printer apparently wants to talk to some preconfigured NTP (bad idea!) ONLY, and our firewall does not tolerate that.
RE: Setting time manually without internet
Well, what can I say? My MK4 had the correct time when it arrived, I just had to adjust the time zone I think. I used it with OctoPrint from the beginning, so it was never connected to a network for the first months. Only after the time was off a few minutes I temporarily plugged in an ethernet cable for a few seconds and the time was correct again.