Important Note: A fault have been found in this revision of TCXO RTC module that prevented the battery from being recharged safely if the battery itself lacked protection circuitry. The battery charger and protection circuitry is removed and bypassed on this PCB and the board now have to use a Lithium primary cell in place of the rechargeable. If you still demand on with rechargeable batteries, please send me an email and I will release a revision using Li-po with built-in protection circuitry.

Raspberry Pi does not come with its own RTC. And we solves this, with extra precision. This module comes with a DS3231 temperature-compensated crystal real time clock chip, and a rechargeable backup battery.

Story of Creation

I have a few DS3231 (and PCF8561) modules to keep time on my several Pi's. However after a few months to a year without powering them on their soldered-on backup batteries get depleted and the time is lost every time I power the Pi down, essentially rendering the modules useless. So I think I need a RTC module with bigger and a rechargeable battery, so it can last longer, and should it be ever depleted I can recharge the batteries.

I created this M171v2 board to solve both battery-related issues with one solution. The backup battery is no longer soldered down directly and is actually a few sizes larger, the backup battery is now a rechargeable Li-ion battery, and there is a proper battery protection and charge control circuit onboard.

Content of the kit you bought

• A fully assembled M171v2-R PCB
• A LIR2032 battery (the Li-ion rechargeable battery in CR2032 size)