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Arch's Planetary Local Clock

Ever been stuck on planet and wondered how long it is before dawn?


This script adds a clock for planetary bases, so you can see the local time. It works by assuming the day/night cycle (i.e. "year" ) is of a particular length (default is 2 hours) and resetting periodically. You can either do this manually - for example, running with the argument "6" will reset the clock to 6am (dawn) - or you can use a solar panel.


Note that this doesn't show the real world time - it's the local time on the planet you're on. For the real world time - and many other functions - I can recomment MMaster's excellent Automatic LCDs 2 script. No doubt there are many alternatives.


To show the clock on an LCD or text panel, add "[Clock]" to the panel's name. The prog block on which the script is running will automatically show the clock on its display.


To reset with a solar panel, set up a panel in a clear spot and add "[Clock]" to its name. When the panel gets light after a long period of darkness the clock will reset to 6am. True dawn will be a little while after this - solar panels start to emit power in pre-dawn light.


It's not guaranteed to be 100% correct - it may speed up or slow down, relying as it does on the TimeSinceLastRun mechanism. However, it should only be out by a few minutes every day, and using a solar panel to reset it will bring it back into time every day.


It's also possible to tell the script to do things at certain times. To do this, you need to edit the Custom Data and add text.
Each item in the schedule should be on a line by itself, and looks like this:
where hours and mins are either:

• single numbers indicating the hour and minute when the event should occur
  
• a range of numbers, so "12-15 20" (hours is "12-15" and mins is "20") will happen at 12:20, 13:20, 14:20 and 15:20
  
• a comma-separated list of numbers, so "10,11,12 0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55" (note the space between 12 and 0, separating the hours from the minutes) will happen every five minutes between 10am and 12:55pm.
  
• An asterisk "*" meaning "all values"

Those of you intimately familiar with Unix/Linux systems will recognise this as a very cut-down and slightly reordered version of a crontab.

The rest of the line, after the time elements, is a command. This can be:

• on blockname to turn a block on (see below for how blocknames work)
  
• off blockname to turn a block off (see below for how blocknames work)
  
• action blockname action to perform an Action on a block - actions are listed on the Space Engineers wiki in the Action List[www.spaceengineerswiki.com]
  
• run blockname argument to run another programmable block's script with a given argument
  
• reseton / resetoff (see Enabling/Disabling Solar Reset below)

The blockname is either:

• A string which the name of the block contains - if there's more than one block containing that string, the command will run on all blocks which contain the string
  
• G: followed by a group name which must be exactly correct - this will run the command on all blocks in the group

At the moment, blocknames cannot contain spaces - sorry!

• 8 20 on G:InteriorLights will turn on blocks in the group InteriorLights at 8:20am
  
• 10 45,50 action door Open_Off will close all blocks (hopefully doors) whose name contains "door" at 10:45 and 10:50
  
• * 30 action foolight OnOff will toggle the On/Off status of all blocks with "foolight" in the name on the half-hour (i.e. 00:30, 01:30 and so on for all hours)
  
• 10,11 0,30 run MyProgBlock wibble will run the script on the programmable block MyProgBlock with the argument "wibble" at 10:00, 10:30, 11:00 and 11:30

IMPORTANT: the script will only read the contents of the Custom Data text and turn it into a schedule when you tell it to. You must run the script with the argument "customdata" or "cd" whenever you change the schedule.




Sometimes you may need to temporarily turn off the automatic reset when the solar panel gets light. To do this, run the block with the argument resetoff to turn off solar resetting, or reseton to turn it back on. Because of how I've written the code, you can also use these in a schedule (although I doubt there's any point).