dhenry:
i am struggling to find any readup on how to program an RTC
The simplest would be to use your arduino to keep time: presumably the arduino is running all the time.
It is, however i may be away from my arduino for extended periods of time, so therefore would rather use an RTC so that even if the power drops once the power comes back on the whole thing restarts itself.
LarryD:
I have been considering the DS1307 RTC, do you think this will be suitable ?
Yes this is a good choice.
The Time library contains examples for the DS1307 RTC. Arduino Playground - HomePage
It also contains TimeAlarms which can be used to do things on a timed basis.
Thanks for that Larry, id been reading the library but had missed a very obvious link in there, reading through some of the examples this should be fairly easy to do.