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How would low temperatures effect the following RTC module? I'm talking around -20 degrees Celsius. It can be seen on the picture that it uses the DS1307N version, which is industrial (-40 to 80 degrees).

So my question is, what if I use the other version (non industrial, from 0 to 70 degrees) would that change the outcome date-time a lot in low temperatures?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ The temperature coefficient of frequency curve for a 32.768kHz crystal is interesting and worth a look at, if you care about clock accuracy. \$\endgroup\$
    – user16324
    Feb 18, 2021 at 18:13

2 Answers 2

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The specified range is for the ``guaranteed'' parameters; i.e. they say that it will works at up to 60°C and, something like, it will drift at most 2 minutes each years; going over range can result in many different behaviour:

  • It simply don't work or maybe even break (quite improbable);
  • It will work but it's lifetime is reduced;
  • It will work with degraded specification, like drift 3 minutes each year (just an example)
  • It will work perfectly but it simply wasn't tested at high temperature to be sure of that.

Often manufacturer do a product lot and then 'bin' the parts on some tested characteristic: maybe something like 30% isn't even tested and put into the 'low grade' bin, the other part are tested and binned accordingly. Pricing is done on the product yield.

Other times maybe the core component is the same but packaged in a more sturdy way (you pay for the package in this case)

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It might work perfectly, or it could stop working entirely. In the latter case you would have no recourse with the manufacturer. They don't guarantee it won't work outside that range, they guarantee it will work within the specified range.

Odds are good it will work perfectly, by the way, but there are many applications where rolling the dice (or spending the time and money to test) is very much inappropriate.

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