ESP32-32 internet clock

[sick thorn]

I'm trying to build a simple internet clock with an esp32s2 and a 7-segment display. I am pulling the current time from an API (openweathermap), and using adafruit_datetime to make a string from the unix timestamp in the parsed json, which I then format down to a hh:mm format. It seems to work ONLY when I am running it from a shell on my computer, and not when it runs as code.py, bare. In the latter, the display seems to show a default time of 12:00, and not whatever time is pulled from the request. Any ideas?

    print("starting loop")
    print("Fetching json from", TIME_DATA_SOURCE)
    json_data = requests.get(TIME_DATA_SOURCE)
    formatted_data = json_data.json()
    current_time_unix = (formatted_data.get("dt"))
    current_time = datetime.fromtimestamp(current_time_unix)   
    timestring = str(current_time)
    parsed_time = parse_time(timestring)
    simple_time = hh_mm(parsed_time)
    print(simple_time)
    display.fill(0)
    display.print(simple_time)
    time.sleep(10)’’’

[fiery grove]

what does print(simple_time) show?

[sick thorn]

If I run it from Thonny, the terminal shell shows "10:55", which is correct. That also shows up on the display. But when I save as code.py, and run it without the shell, the display shows a current time, beginning with 12:00.

I think something in the code is pulling a localtime from my computer, and not setting it on the esp32 based on the API call.

[fiery grove]

I don't know what dark magic Thonny does. Can you post the entire code (fix the backticks)? That would make it easier to load it up and try it.

I'd suggest trying to with an editor that doesn't do any interactions with the desktop environment... editor and serial console only.