Set Up time for visiting a different country
I want to take my audiomoth to New Zealand from UK to record some bats but I wont have access to a PC when there. How can i set up the audiomoth time before leaving UK so I can use the audiomoth chime to set the local time in New Zealand?
I will have an ipad with me but am not aware i can connect the audiomoth to the ipad.
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Hi, Timezones are always confusing. The default operation is that AudioMoth uses UTC for all timestamps and for the schedule. The acoustic chime sets the time reference held by the AudioMoth using UTC. However, the timezone used for the schedule and the timestamps can also set independently (normally when you configure the schedule in the Config App). For your deployment, there are two options:
1. Set the custom timezone to New Zealand Daylight time and then enter the recording schedule that you need.
When you use the acoustic chime in New Zealand, the AudioMoth will use the UTC time from the app to update the time, and will always apply the UTC+13 correction, will use UTC+13 for all filenames and timestamps, and use the 09:00 to 16:00 (UTC+13) schedule that has been set. This is the easiest approach. 2. Sometimes you want to use the local time zone which you don't know beforehand, or there may be multiple deployment timezones. You may also want the schedule to adjust to the local timezone. For example, if you schedule 09:00 to 16:00 UTC+1 in the UK, you might actually want it record at 09:00 to 16:00 UTC+13 when deployed in New Zealand, so that they are both recording during equivalent daylight hours. To do that configure normally in local time - UTC+1 below. The schedule will appear as 09:00 - 16:00 (UTC+1) at this point.
Then in the 'Advanced Tab' also enable 'Use time zone in acoustic chime' and 'Also adust schedule to new time zone'. In this case, if you set a schedule of say 09:00 to 16:00 in any timezone in the Config App, it will be adjusted to 09:00 to 16:00 (UTC+13) when in a UTC+13 timezone.
It's also good to enable 'Always require acoustic chime on switching to CUSTOM' to ensure that you always are required to use the chime.
You can try this out by changing the timezone on your smartphone before deployment, or you can use the web based version on a desktop: https://chime.openacousticdevices.info If you click on the underlined timezone shown, you can select to use the timezone from the map location, and try out the chime for any location.
After switching to CUSTOM and playing the chime, the updated timezone and recording schedule will be shown in the CONFIG.TXT file so you can check that the schedule is correct. In the running example here, the device was configured to record 09:00 - 16:00 (UTC+1) but after the UTC+13 chime, the configuration is updated to record 09:00 - 16:00 (UTC+13).
Alex