How can I upload data to ThingSpeak with a custom timestamp instead of using the server’s current time?

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Doa 2025-11-5，13:12

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https://ww2.mathworks.cn/matlabcentral/answers/2181055-how-can-i-upload-data-to-thingspeak-with-a-custom-timestamp-instead-of-using-the-server-s-current-ti

评论： Christopher Stapels about 2 hours 前

I am currently using the ThingSpeak API to upload bat detection data from my project. I am trying to set the created_at timestamp to match the date and time captured from the image filenames. However, despite sending the created_at field in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ) via JSON in a POST request, ThingSpeak still records the current upload time instead of the provided timestamp.

Could you please clarify the correct way to send a custom timestamp so that ThingSpeak uses it instead of the current server time? Any guidance or examples would be greatly appreciated.

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Doa about 17 hours 前

编辑：Doa about 7 hours 前

在 MATLAB Online 中打开

Thank you for your response.

Currently, I am sending data to ThingSpeak using a POST request in JSON format like this:

            location, date_str, month = extract_metadata(file.filename)
            # Convert date string to ThingSpeak timestamp
            from datetime import datetime
            try:
                date_obj = datetime.strptime(date_str, "%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M")
            except ValueError:
                date_obj = datetime.utcnow()
                
                payload = {
                    "api_key": THINGSPEAK_API_KEY,
                    "field1": count,  # Bat count
                    "field2": location,  # Location
                    "created_at": date_obj.strftime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ")  #Custom timestamp from filename
                    }

The created_at field is populated using the timestamp extracted from the image filename or folder name which was collected previously. I want to make sure this timestamp accurately reflects the time the image was captured, not the time of upload.

Here are some example folder names:

20250120_TolgaScrub_M3T_8am_30m
January_20250113_Gordonvale_M3T_6am_20m_Ortho
PilotStudy_MonashSt_20240918_M3T_Flight2

And example image files:

PilotStudy_MonashSt_20240918_M3T_Flight2_tile_1_7.png

Would you recommend switching to a GET request format for this data, like so:

https://api.thingspeak.com/update?api_key=H0JZNIRA6SMHJNO8&field1=58&field2=CreesCreek&created_at=2025-04-23+21:36:20+0000

If I decide to use the GET request, should I URL encode the created_at parameter (e.g., replacing spaces with %20)?

I want to ensure that the created_at timestamp is unique for each entry and accurately reflects the time from the image's metadata. Additionally, I would like to verify that the date format used in the request will work smoothly with ThingSpeak.

For reference, my ThingSpeak Channel ID is 3142218.

Christopher Stapels about 2 hours 前

I suspect your http library takes care of the url encoding so I suggest wating to check on that till later.

The time format you are using seems good, but its not clear from the code snippet what happens if there are no seconds or minutes in the folder name.

Thingspeak still records the time you wrote the data (I think its updated at), but also uses created_at for your plots. One possibility is confusion due to times. Thingspeak stores data in UTC, but plots in the time zone that your web browser is set at. I looked at your channel data though, and I dont see evidence of this problem with the data in there currently.

I used POSTMAN to create some test datapoints and ensure it works.

You can also use your web browser address field to test, but then you need to use the GET requests.

This format worked for me

https://api.thingspeak.com/update?api_key=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&field1=11&created_at=2025-11-06T8:45:51Z

or here is the format from the doc page.

POST api.thingspeak.com/update.json

Content-Type: application/json

{

"api_key": "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"

"created_at": "2018-04-23 21:36:20 +0200",

"field1": "John Johnson",

"field3": 56,

"field4": 555,

"field5": 444,

"latitude": "",

"longitude": "",

"status": "Please check in!"

}

You can try outputting the POST you are using to the serial monitor to ensure its fromatted correctly.

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How can I upload data to ThingSpeak with a custom timestamp instead of using the server’s current time?

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How can I upload data to ThingSpeak with a custom timestamp instead of using the server’s current time?

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