UNIX time in ms to human date time

Question

Been struggling with something for a few days.

Loading data from a website via JSON and it includes an updated date time in milliseconds. This is an EPOCH date and I can get the right value using some of the online convertor sites, epochconvertor.com

That said when I try and parse it in my sketch it’s not retuning the correct date.

JSON “currentupdatedms”:1588312648603

Convertor Shows as: 1 May 2020 05:57:28.603

My sketch is showing: 1 May 2020 02:33:00

That’s in the JSON and I can’t use a Long as it’s 13 digits. Tried Long Long and it accepts the value but when I later divide by 1000 to get seconds the number changes completely when I try printing it to serial or the OLED.

Plan is to use the Timeh library to display it as a human date time.

Any thoughts be appreciated.

Here is my code and I have tried various methods:

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <ESP8266HTTPClient.h>
#include <ArduinoJson.h>
#include <TimeLib.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <Wire.h>
#include <Adafruit_GFX.h>
#include <Adafruit_SSD1306.h>

#define SCREEN_WIDTH 128 // OLED display width, in pixels
#define SCREEN_HEIGHT 64 // OLED display height, in pixels

// Declaration for an SSD1306 display connected to I2C (SDA, SCL pins)
#define OLED_RESET     4 // Reset pin # (or -1 if sharing Arduino reset pin)
Adafruit_SSD1306 display(SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT, &Wire, OLED_RESET);

#define ARDUINOJSON_JSON_LONG_LONG 1 //Not needed???
#define   ONE_HOUR   3600
const size_t capacity = JSON_OBJECT_SIZE(8) + 140;
DynamicJsonDocument doc(capacity);

/*Notes
   Need to look at conversion of Update and Changed times as they are not showing correctly
   Move the conversion of time datetime in ms to a seperate function
   Move the get request and JSON section to seperate function
*/

const char* ssid = "SSID";
const char* password = "PWD";

void setup () {

  Serial.begin(4800);

  Wire.begin(2, 0);           // set I2C pins (SDA = GPIO2, SCL = GPIO0), default clock is 100kHz

  // SSD1306_SWITCHCAPVCC = generate display voltage from 3.3V internally
  if (!display.begin(SSD1306_SWITCHCAPVCC, 0x3C)) {
    Serial.println(F("SSD1306 allocation failed"));
    for (;;); // Don't proceed, loop forever
  }

  display.clearDisplay();
  display.setTextColor(SSD1306_WHITE);

  WiFi.begin(ssid, password);

  display.setCursor(0, 0);
  display.println(F("Connecting to Wifi..."));
  display.display();

  while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
    delay(1000);
    Serial.println("Connecting to Wifi...");
  }

  display.setCursor(0, 10);
  display.println(F("Wifi Connected..."));
  display.display();
}

void loop() {

  if (WiFi.status() == WL_CONNECTED) { //Check WiFi connection status

    display.setCursor(0, 20);
    display.println(F("Requesting Data..."));
    display.display();
    delay(2000); // Pause for 2 seconds

    HTTPClient http;  //Declare an object of class HTTPClient

    http.begin("http://corona.tuply.co.za/DataHandler.ashx?w=s&uq=8f1fp8p5jdxi84481");  //Specify request destination
    int httpCode = http.GET();                                                                  //Send the request

    if (httpCode > 0) { //Check the returning code

      String payload = http.getString();   //Get the request response payload
      Serial.println(payload);                     //Print the response payload

      deserializeJson(doc, payload);

      int TotalCases = doc["TotalCases"];
      int TotalCasesToday = doc["TotalCasesToday"];
      int TotalDeaths = doc["TotalDeaths"];
      int TotalDeathsToday = doc["TotalDeathsToday"];
      int TotalRecovered = doc["TotalRecovered"];
      int TotalTerritories = doc["TotalTerritories"];
      long long CurrentUpdatedMS = doc["CurrentUpdatedMS"];
      long long CurrentChangedMS = doc["CurrentChangedMS"];

      //delay(10000);

      time_t CurrentUpdateMS_t = (CurrentUpdatedMS/1000) + ONE_HOUR; //ONE_HOUR added for BST

      char buffUpdateMS[32];
      sprintf(buffUpdateMS, "%02d/%02d/%02d %02d:%02d:%02d", day(CurrentUpdateMS_t), month(CurrentUpdateMS_t), year(CurrentUpdateMS_t), hour(CurrentUpdateMS_t), minute(CurrentUpdateMS_t), second(CurrentUpdateMS_t));
      Serial.print("U:");
      Serial.println(buffUpdateMS);
      Serial.print("ctime: ");
      Serial.println(ctime(&CurrentUpdateMS_t));

      time_t CurrentChangedMS_t = CurrentChangedMS/1000 + ONE_HOUR; //ONE_HOUR added for BST

      char buffChangedMS[32];
      sprintf(buffChangedMS, "%02d/%02d/%02d %02d:%02d:%02d", day(CurrentChangedMS_t), month(CurrentChangedMS_t), year(CurrentChangedMS_t), hour(CurrentChangedMS_t), minute(CurrentChangedMS_t), second(CurrentChangedMS_t));
      Serial.print("C:");
      Serial.println(buffChangedMS);
      Serial.print("ctime: ");
      Serial.println(ctime(&CurrentChangedMS_t));

      display.clearDisplay();

      display.setCursor(0, 0);
      display.print(F("T Cases: "));
      display.println(TotalCases);

      Serial.print("Total Cases: ");
      Serial.println(TotalCases);

      Serial.print("Total Cases Today: ");
      Serial.println(TotalCasesToday);

      display.setCursor(0, 10);
      display.print(F("T Deaths: "));
      display.println(TotalDeaths);

      Serial.print("Total Deaths: ");
      Serial.println(TotalDeaths);

      Serial.print("Total Deaths Today: ");
      Serial.println(TotalDeathsToday);

      display.setCursor(0, 20);
      display.print(F("T Recov: "));
      display.println(TotalRecovered);

      Serial.print("Total Recovered: ");
      Serial.println(TotalRecovered);

      Serial.print("Total Territories: ");
      Serial.println(TotalTerritories);

      display.setCursor(0, 30);
      display.print(F("U T: "));
      display.println(buffUpdateMS);

      display.setCursor(0, 40);
      display.print(F("C T: "));
      display.println(buffChangedMS);

      display.display();

    }

    http.end();   //Close connection

  }

  delay(60000);    //Send a request every 60 seconds

}

If I run that now I get this JSON string:

{"TotalCases":4036128,"TotalCasesToday":26837,"TotalDeaths":276825,"TotalDeathsToday":849,"TotalRecovered":1400460,"TotalTerritories":214,"CurrentUpdatedMS":1589027095790,"CurrentChangedMS":1589026765665}

CurrentUpdateMS = 1589027095790 which is Sat May 09 2020 13:24:55, granted there may be an hour difference with BST.

Instead I am getting:

Sat May 9 13:23:32 2020

Also appears to stay the same after refreshes which I have set to 60 seconds.

I tried the Time.h library with same results.

Thankful for any input or suggestions.

Answer 1

It's hard to know what is wrong with your code... because you are not showing it in the question! Here is a basic test I tried on my Uno:

#include <time.h>

const uint64_t ms = 1588312648603;

void setup() {
    time_t t = ms/1000 - UNIX_OFFSET;
    Serial.begin(9600);
    Serial.println(ctime(&t));
}

void loop(){}

It's output is:

Fri May 01 05:57:28 2020

Note that this <time.h> comes from the avr-libc. It uses an epoch different from the Unix epoch, hence the UNIX_OFFSET correction.

Edit: I tried replacing avr-libc's <time.h> by Adafruit RTClib (declaring DateTime t(ms/1000);) and Paul Stoffregen’s Time library (with time_t t = ms/1000;). In all cases I get the same time displayed.