embassy/embassy-time/README.md

48 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
Raw Normal View History

2022-08-23 11:57:45 +00:00
# embassy-time
Timekeeping, delays and timeouts.
Timekeeping is done with elapsed time since system boot. Time is represented in
2023-12-22 16:33:24 +00:00
ticks, where the tick rate is defined either by the driver (in the case of a fixed-rate
tick) or chosen by the user with a [tick rate](#tick-rate) feature. The chosen
tick rate applies to everything in `embassy-time` and thus determines the maximum
timing resolution of <code>(1 / tick_rate) seconds</code>.
2022-08-23 11:57:45 +00:00
Tick counts are 64 bits. The default tick rate of 1Mhz supports
2022-08-23 11:57:45 +00:00
representing time spans of up to ~584558 years, which is big enough for all practical
purposes and allows not having to worry about overflows.
## Global time driver
The `time` module is backed by a global "time driver" specified at build time.
Only one driver can be active in a program.
All methods and structs transparently call into the active driver. This makes it
possible for libraries to use `embassy_time` in a driver-agnostic way without
requiring generic parameters.
2024-01-11 16:17:36 +00:00
For more details, check the [`embassy_time_driver`](https://crates.io/crates/embassy-time-driver) crate.
## Instants and Durations
2022-08-23 11:57:45 +00:00
[`Instant`] represents a given instant of time (relative to system boot), and [`Duration`]
represents the duration of a span of time. They implement the math operations you'd expect,
like addition and substraction.
## Delays and timeouts
2022-08-23 11:57:45 +00:00
[`Timer`] allows performing async delays. [`Ticker`] allows periodic delays without drifting over time.
An implementation of the `embedded-hal` delay traits is provided by [`Delay`], for compatibility
with libraries from the ecosystem.
## Wall-clock time
2022-08-23 11:57:45 +00:00
The `time` module deals exclusively with a monotonically increasing tick count.
Therefore it has no direct support for wall-clock time ("real life" datetimes
like `2021-08-24 13:33:21`).
If persistence across reboots is not needed, support can be built on top of
`embassy_time` by storing the offset between "seconds elapsed since boot"
and "seconds since unix epoch".