# State of accurate time: sub-second accuracy?

**URL:** <https://discuss.blues.com/t/state-of-accurate-time-sub-second-accuracy/2406>\
**Category:** Notecard API\
**Created:** [October 27, 2024, 12:27pm UTC](https://discuss.blues.com/t/state-of-accurate-time-sub-second-accuracy/2406 "2024-10-27T12:27:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gauteh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.blues.com/gauteh/32/269_2.png) [@gauteh](https://discuss.blues.com/u/gauteh)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2024, 12:27pm UTC](https://discuss.blues.com/t/state-of-accurate-time-sub-second-accuracy/2406/1 "2024-10-27T12:27:43Z")

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Hi, I use `card.time` to get the current time. I understand it is accurate to the order of a second at the moment (and anyway the resolution of the response is on the order of a second). With the GPS it should be possible to get more accurate time. If I could get accurate time to a deci or centisecond that would be very useful. I understand that the time may drift between syncs or GPS fixes, that is acceptable.

> **[card Requests - API Reference - Blues Developers](https://dev.blues.io/api-reference/notecard-api/card-requests/latest/#card-time)**
>
> The Notecard provides a number of requests that can be used to configure the behavior of the Notecard, its pins, its use of GPS and accelerometer data, and to query the state of the Device, its network connection and peripherals.

Regards, Gaute

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**Author:** ![gauteh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.blues.com/gauteh/32/269_2.png) [@gauteh](https://discuss.blues.com/u/gauteh)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2024, 12:49pm UTC](https://discuss.blues.com/t/state-of-accurate-time-sub-second-accuracy/2406/2 "2024-10-27T12:49:46Z")

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By the way, I think card.time always returns UTC time. Would be great if this was documented.

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**Author:** ![tjvantoll](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.blues.com/tjvantoll/32/231_2.png) [@tjvantoll](https://discuss.blues.com/u/tjvantoll)\
**Post date:** [October 29, 2024, 4:17pm UTC](https://discuss.blues.com/t/state-of-accurate-time-sub-second-accuracy/2406/3 "2024-10-29T16:17:31Z")

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Hey @gauteh,

I ran your question by our firmware team and got this back:

“The time returned by `card.time` cannot possibly be exactly accurate. If sourced by GPS it can be close, but when obtained from the network it must be transferred over a slow network. And then there are delays in sending the time between the Notecard and the host over serial or i2c. If you want subsecond accuracy in absolute time, we cannot do it. If you want subsecond accuracy in relative time, you should be using host-based timers.”

> By the way, I think card.time always returns UTC time. Would be great if this was documented.

Good call on this. I made a note to update our docs 👍

TJ