[Solved] NodeMCU Time zone based SNTP synchronization

I have an ESP8266 NodeMCU board. I have loaded the NodeMCU Lua based firmware on it and need accurate time keeping for scheduling few functions. I built the binary using their cloud service with following modules: rtctime, sntp, cron amongst others.

How can I set the local time using sntp module? My local time has an offset of 19800 (5.5 hours IST) from UTC.

I am unable to set this offset in sntp.setoffset(offset) call

> sntp.setoffset(19800)
> sntp.getoffset()
88
>

why does getoffset print 88?

Update =====> It prints 88 because the offset data type in the C code is unsigned byte and instead of using this offset for time zone handling we must use zone files from Linux (example here)

Update: Setting the RTC to local time by using rtctime.set(seconds_since_unix_epoch) in the success callback of sntp.sync() works fine.

function sntp_sync_time()
  sntp.sync(nil, function(sec, usec, server, info) rtctime.set(sec + 19800) end, sntp_sync_time, 1)
end

Also I'm calling the same function recursively in the failure callback until successful synchronization doesn't happen.

Thanks