Selecting a time zone

Platform configuration of the Niagara host includes the setting of date and time, which includes specifying its local time zone.
 NOTE: For any Niagara 4 Windows host, you must use Windows tools to specify a time zone and/or change date and time. Such tasks, as well as TCP/IP configuration on a Windows host, are read-only. 

Typically, you specify time zone in the JACE controller during its initial commissioning in a platform connection, when running the Commissioning Wizard. Or, you can do this at any time using the Platform Administration view (function “Change Date/Time”).

Figure 146.   Selecting time zone from Change Date/Time selection in Platform Administration View
Image

After a station is installed and running, you can also specify the JACE’s time zone using one of the station’s PlatformService views (“Platform Service Container Plugin” or “System Date and Time Editor”).

In any case, time zones appear on a selection list with a format such as:
Zone IDhours UTC offset DSThours UTC offset UST).

For example:

America/Chicago (-6,-5)
Europe/Berlin (+1,+2)
Asia/Tokyo (+9)

Note there is no DST observance in Japan, so the selection with zone ID “Asia/Tokyo” shows only the UTC offset of +9 hours. This selection list of time zones is from a historical “time zone database”.

 NOTE: Iin Niagara 4 and later, there is no separately maintained “timezones.jar” distributed in Niagara builds for a time zone database, nor associated entries in a platform’s system.properties file. Instead, time zones are directly sourced from the Java VM (virtual machine) in the host platform. This means there is no longer a workflow for updating time zone definitions independently from Java updates that may be included in Niagara 4 updates.