SpectrumLab functions: now and time

[strinjf]

From the documentation, I understand that the time function: returns the time when the last line of the waterfall (FFT) has been calculated. Depending on the scrolling speed, this can be different from "now". The unit is the same as for "now" (seconds elapsed since 1970-01-01 00:00:00.0 UTC).

and the now function: returns the current time (including the date) in the internal format of the program, which is a combination of date plus time as a floating point number.

 

Does anyone know why these functions return such greatly different times?  I would expect it to be only a few seconds difference at most? (or have I missed someting).

Example, 

now:  2020-08-12 09:11:00 UTC

time: 2020-08-12 06:55:22 UTC

 

 

[Geminids]

My understanding of these functions is that, time  returns a value that can be subject to the vagueries of processor busyness speed etc.  and will be subject to variable delays (the author of Spectrum Lab explained this in Spectrum. Lab User Forum iogroups some time back).  Now was introduce to overcome these problems and gives the most accurate report of time at the time the function is called.  Your processor must be very busy 🙂 for such a  difference.   Seriously, there difference you talk about seems wrong.   It will also be dependent on  the context of where it is used in your conditional actions script - if the functions are side by side in  a long loop process or the FFTs are large for example. 

 

[strinjf]

Certainly seems weird that they're so far off. I've got button labels using now and time 

 

It's annoying, because I had about 4-5 days of data and my actions were using a mix of time and now - so the times between log entries, and filenames for captures etc. don't correlate properly and it took a while to find time to properly investigate.  I've sorted everything out and using 'now' throughout.

[Geminids]

On 13/08/2020 at 15:17, strinjf said:

I've sorted everything out and using 'now' throughout.

Yep - a good idea to do that !