Rock PI 4 RTC problem

ROCK 4 Series Troubleshooting
1

Description of the problem:

We have two singleboard computers RockPI 4A v1.4 and RockPI 4B v1.3

While working with RockPI 4B 1.3, a problem was detected with the RTC real-time clock. If you connect the battery to RTC, the time is not saved after a rebooting.

Example:
sudo date –set “2019-08-08 12:00:00”
sudo hwclock –r
“2013-06-06 9:05:23”
sudo hwclock -w
sudo hwclock –r
“2019-08-08 12:00:23”
sudo reboot
sudo hwclock –r
“2013-06-06 9:05:23”

This problem does not repeat on RockPI 4A v1.4, the clock remains synchronized even after a long power outage.

The situation was checked with three distribitivs: Ubuntu Server 18.04, Armbian Bionic, Debian 9

Please, help us with the solving of the problem

2

Hi, Vitaly

RTC should work on both v1.3 and v1.4 boards. The following command works fine here with RTC battery attached:

date -s 20190909
hwclock -w

Power off the board and remove the power adapter. Wait for some minutes, power on

hwclock -r

The date is still 20190909.

If you have issue with RTC time, maybe it’s a hardware issue, the battery connector is somehow defective.

Check also:

Real Time Clock (RTC)

RTC alarm:

Does the rtc on rockpi4 support wakealarms - #2 by jack

3

Hi, jack
We have tried this scenario on RockPI 4B 1.3.

hwclock -r
2013-01-18 12:56:37.713703+0400

date -s 20190904
Wed Sep  4 00:00:00 MSK 2019

hwclock -w

Then power off for two minutes. After boot:

hwclock -r
2013-01-18 12:51:06.312073+0400

The very same SD card with OS image and same RTC battery works fine on Rock PI 4A 1.4.

4

It seems there is some hardware issue with your rock pi 4b v1.3. You can try to measure the voltage of RTC connector 2 pins. If you are not familiar with hardware, just ask for a RMA with the distributor.

5

Thank you, jack!
It was hardware issue. One pin was poorly soldered.

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