Format of Date/Time Field in Datasets for use in CartoDB Torque CAT

Question

I have a Date/Time field in my data set on cartodb that is formatted as follows: 2016-02-09T10:30:00Z that is the value in the first row. The data type is set to 'date'. I want to use this field to create a Torque visualization where the slider on the map shows the date and time correctly. However, when I try this and select my Date/Time field, the slider that is added to the map (by default) is starting at 02/08/2016 1900

Is this a bug in Cartodb or the way I have my times formatted?

This is the link to my map: https://milam.cartodb.com/viz/f73a1f4a-c9e5-11e5-868e-0ef7f98ade21/public_map

Answer 1

This might be caused by the Torque map nature.

Torque is a spatial aggregator, it's going to render an animation point representing a cluster of your dataset points. So when a you look at your map, CartoDB wouldn't necessarily render points at the exact coordinates that you have in your dataset (like it would do in a non-torque map).

Torque also aggregates by time. It calculates the whole time period from the first to last date/time in your column, and splits that time up into buckets. The number of buckets is the same as the number of steps you choose in the Editor, where one bucket is one animation frame. So, due the spatial aggregation feature and the way that Torque aggregates by time, the time that you see at the time slider, might be different than the first time value of your dataset. You can find more information about Torque features in this lesson of the CartoDB Map Academy.