Witty Pi 4 L3V7 - unexpected schedule script behaviour?

The behavior you are seeing is expected.

BEGIN defines the beginning of the schedule cycle. It does not mean “schedule a startup at this time”.

With:

BEGIN 2026-08-22 06:30:00
ON M10
OFF H23 M50

the schedule is:

• ON from Aug 22 06:30 to 06:40
• Shutdown at Aug 22 06:40
• Stay OFF for 23h50m
• Startup at Aug 23 06:30

Since the Pi is already ON when you apply the schedule, no startup needs to be scheduled for Aug 22 06:30. From Aug 23 onward, it will start at 06:30 and shut down at 06:40 every day.

Also, you are right about the 2017 dates in the diagram on page 19. Those are typos and should be 2021. We will correct that in the documentation.

@admin thank you for the clarification, I will wait for the 23rd for the cycle to begin as I expected it too.

@admin Hello,

The cycle seems to have settled, but not at the times I expected:

william@apod:~/wittypi $ ./wittyPi.sh 
================================================================================
|                                                                              |
|   Witty Pi - Realtime Clock + Power Management for Raspberry Pi              |
|                                                                              |
|            < Version 4.23 >     by Dun Cat B.V. (UUGear)                     |
|                                                                              |
================================================================================
>>> Current temperature: 27.375°C / 81.275°F
>>> Your system time is: 2026-08-23 10:00:31 BST
>>> Your RTC time is:    2026-08-23 10:00:35 BST
>>> Vin=3.63V, Vout=5.34V, Iout=0.04A (discharging battery...)
Now you can:
  1. Write system time to RTC
  2. Write RTC time to system
  3. Synchronize with network time
  4. Schedule next shutdown [24 06:29:00]
  5. Schedule next startup  [24 06:30:00]
  6. Choose schedule script [in use]
  7. Set low voltage threshold  [3.1V]
  8. Auto-On when USB 5V is connected  [Yes]
  9. Set over temperature action
 10. Set below temperature action
 11. View/change other settings...
 12. Reset data...
 13. Exit
What do you want to do? (1~13) ^Cwilliam@apod:~/wittypi $ ls
afterStartup.sh  beforeScript.sh  beforeShutdown.sh  daemon.sh  init.sh  morning_22.txt  runScript.sh  schedule.log  schedules  schedule.wpi  utilities.sh  wittyPi.log  wittyPi.sh
william@apod:~/wittypi $ cat schedule.wpi
BEGIN 2026-08-22 06:30:00
END 2037-01-01 06:30:00
ON M10
OFF H23 M50
william@apod:~/wittypi $ 

As you can see, it is shutting down at 6:29:00 and turning on at 6:30:00. This happened on the 23rd too.

@spacerulerwill 
What you are seeing now is the schedule revision mechanism working as designed.

According to your schedule, after shutting down at 06:40 the Pi should remain OFF until the next startup at 06:30 the following day. If the Pi is powered on again during that OFF period, Witty Pi treats the schedule as interrupted and revises it so that it can rejoin the original cycle.

In that case it schedules:

06:29 shutdown
06:30 startup

The one-minute shutdown before the next scheduled startup is intentional. After that startup, the normal schedule should resume again:

06:30 startup
06:40 shutdown

So the 06:29 / 06:30 pair does not mean your ON M10 has become one minute. It means the Pi was turned on during a period in which the schedule expected it to be OFF, and the software is revising the schedule to get back in sync.

This schedule revision is also logged in the wittyPi.log file, and you can see something like "Schedule script is interrupted, revising the schedule..."

After seeing this schedule revision, you may shutdown the device and it will turn on again at the next scheduled startup time.