Have you ever wondered what the timestamps in VERA stand for and how you could decode them into meaningful times and dates?
This week I was working on a guide and needed to know when the Z-Wave device (Aeon MultiSensor) was last updated with configuration changes. I'd looked at the VERA timestamps previously and spent a few minutes trying to see a pattern that somehow matched the time and date I'd made the changes - but as hard as I stared at the figures, they never gave me the faintest clue of the time.
For instance what does 1370343837 mean?
This time I did need to know what was happening, so I spent some time researching the timestamps. It didn't take long, other people had had the same question and I found a great solution on the MicasaVerde (MCV) forum.
Turns out that the timestamp is the number of seconds since 1st January 1970 GMT. This is also known as the start of the UNIX Epoch and is commonly used in computing timestamps.
Even better, the forum post had links to web pages that take the timestamp and convert it into a meaningful date and time - http://www.sperryware.com/veratools/time.html
These timestamps are often seen in VERA device configurations such as the 'Settings' and 'Advanced' tabs, using the converter makes it much easier to find out when you created devices or made configuration changes.
Hope this helps you out.
Mark.