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Show HN: Pole Clock, a single 24h clock with multiple timezones
Hi HN! I designed this Pole Clock to be a helpful tool for people like myself who often struggle with managing their sense of time.
I found that analog clocks are generally easier to read and understand than digital ones, however I find the fact that every day is broken into two 12-hour rotations unintuitive. A single 24-hour rotation makes it easier to grasp where in the day you are, the bottom half representing night and the top half representing day.
Additionally, because the clock displays 24 hours, you can add extra hour hands on the clock for other time zones. This is especially useful if you work remotely or have friends and colleagues in different time zones. At a single glance, see where they are in their days and energy levels!
I hope you'll give the Pole Clock a try and find that it helps you better understand and manage your sense of time.
- xwowsersx 4y agoVery nice. I've wanted something simple like this. I work with team distributed all over the globe and often end up googling "time in Minsk", for example. This is a really clever way of combining all the times into a single clock.
- PascalPixel 4y agoGlad it helps you!
- shawkinaw 4y agoLooks a lot like the app World Clock Pro I’ve used for a while: https://worldclock.pro/mobile/ https://worldclock.pro/mobile/
- btbuildem 4y agoAnd that one seems to handle the minute hand question by omitting the minute hand altogether
- ajb 4y agoNice. One thing that would be handy would be to encode the settings in the URL. Then people can share a link to this with others who need the same set of time zones (eg, colleagues) and have the time zones already be set up.
- sourcecodeplz 4y agoI really really like this. Congrats!
- austinnguyen00 4y agoWell done. I think it would be a bit better if I could adjust my default time zone myself in the setting
- codegladiator 4y agoNice, very pleasing
- PascalPixel 4y agoGlad you like it!
- nairboon 4y agoYou might want to rethink the call to vote on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#ring https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#ring
- PascalPixel 4y agoThank you! Just removed the word 'voting' from the link to this post
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Waterluvian 4y agoFirst thing I did was add Newfoundland and nope, it doesn’t add another minute hand. Time zones are ridiculous, eh?
- PascalPixel 4y agoHaha, yes! But Newfoundland's hour hand should be offset a little bit!
- Waterluvian 4y agoAh yes that too. A classic edge case to add frustrating complexity to your implementation! :)
- PascalPixel 4y agoAlways fun! It does the same for every other offset timezone, and seen from that timezone, everything else is slightly offset :)
- laserlight 4y agoHow about an option to show the digital clock on the hand. Engineer in me is not satisfied with lack of precision.
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- bramblerose 4y agoA suggestion: support merging timezones into a single hand. Currently, if two timezones overlap, only the first TZ is shown. However, one might want two hands as the DST shifts may be different.
- PascalPixel 4y agoGreat idea! I could combine the names on a single hand
- rspk 4y agoSomething similar (but simpler) I made for my personal use: https://rsapkf.org/tz https://rsapkf.org/tz
- lifthrasiir 4y agoNot sure if this was an inspiration, but xkcd has a neat clock: https://xkcd.com/now/ https://xkcd.com/now/
- PascalPixel 4y agoNo! But this is fabulous! I'd love to add it to the README
- laserlight 4y agoIt was a mindfuck to see AM/PM clock when the title read 24h.
- PascalPixel 4y agoI've changed it back to 24h by default just now You can change between AM/PM and 24h in the 'Configure Timezones' menu!
- johnchristopher 4y agoAh ! So, that's what ticked me off :D.
- PascalPixel 4y agoOops! It's 24h again now!
- johnchristopher 4y agoCute ^^. I see there's a Statue of Liberty icon for NY, it'd be nice to have icons for other cities :).
- Piko 4y agoYou can change it yourself in the settings
- bookofjoe 4y agoPut this on YouTube: video can be easily linked/embedded
- petodo 4y agothe city with picture arm is not readable on mobile, you need to zoom to know the actual city, it would be better to just use name instead of such small picture also quite odd default choice of cities, so I have own European city, London, then 3 East Asia cities and 2 US cities with nothing between central Europe and Thailand, no middle east, no India it would be also better if every other hour would be bigger so it's easier to figure out minutes, with all of them having same size it's confusing and more difficult to read as if they had highlighted positions of original hours
- pimlottc 4y agoIt's not very legible on a laptop either. Based on the orientation, I thought it was one of those old-timey pointing hand symbols [0]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manicule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manicule
- PascalPixel 4y agoEnticing you to configure the timezones yourself, ehhh? Ehhh? wiggles eyebrows
- habibur 4y agoExcellent. You can see at a glance which of the cities are in right now in day light and where's night.
- PascalPixel 4y agoRight? A 'good enough' solution / update to the regular clock, I felt! :)
- Aardwolf 4y agoNot precisely though since in different places, the sun goes up/under at different times. An interesting thing could be if the small hands had a color that indicates the night/day/dusk/dawn
- walthamstow 4y agoI've always found it quite weird (though obviously convenient) that Warsaw and Madrid are on the same time zone
- Symbiote 4y agoThey are not. It is 17:25 in Warsaw now, 16:25 in Dublin.
- walthamstow 4y agoOops, not sure what city I was thinking of when I wrote Dublin My point is that CET feels rather wide to me, so I guess substitute for Sevilla or Madrid
- michaelt 4y agoIf you want a single-view visualisation of sunrise/sunset across the globe, there's always this design: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html
- nonethewiser 4y agoWhy not abbreviate New York as NY instead of New? Why also use a statue of liberty emoji for eastern standard time instead of EST or NY?
- PascalPixel 4y agoYou can configure the name to display whatever you like :)
- jsjohnst 4y agoActually, you can’t if you are in that time zone. If I have my local device in a different time zone, then yes, I can set the name.
- PascalPixel 4y agoOh, right! I should actually just delete the display of the local time zone... done!
- JEDI-HACKER 4y agoWhy all the why questions?
- cormullion 4y agoGet it added to the collection at https://24hourtime.info/2022/07/13/the-sun-clock/ https://24hourtime.info/2022/07/13/the-sun-clock/
- perilunar 4y agoThat's my clock!
- nsainaney 4y agoShouldn't there be two minute hands if you add LA and India (PST and IST)? The minutes are offset by 30 mins in this scenario.
- gumby 4y agoYou can see this by the position of the hour hands. The minute hand is “just” a convenience.
- psnehanshu 4y agoAnother one for Nepal, they have an offset of 45 mins.
- dfee 4y agoCame here looking for a comment suggesting these discrepancies. I was not disappointed. See also: “Falsehoods programmers believe about time” https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-program...
- PascalPixel 4y agoHey meaniehead... I added offsets to the hour hands for +30 and +45 timezones!
- ciex 4y agoCan anyone recommend a book that discusses in depth all the peculiarities of timekeeping, time zones, historical efforts for measuring time, etc.? I would love to read something like that and I feel that there are many stories to be told.
- tinodb 4y agoIt’s a long post, not a book but still a great resource on this topic: https://zachholman.com/talk/utc-is-enough-for-everyone-right https://zachholman.com/talk/utc-is-enough-for-everyone-right
- 4y ago
- divbzero 4y agoTwo ideas to consider adding to this cool concept: 1. Could there be an option to place 00:00 at the top instead of the bottom? It looks like both positions have been used for analog 24 hour clocks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_analog_dial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_analog_dial 2. Could there be an option to set the background to be a polar-projected world map (e.g. United Nations emblem) that rotates to align with the turning of the hour hands? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azimuthal_equidistant_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azimuthal_equidistant_projecti...
- krisoft 4y agoFor the second one, that is what is done by this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1335/ https://xkcd.com/1335/ But unfortunately they have noon at the top.
- Svip 4y ago> 1. Could there be an option to place 00:00 at the top instead of the bottom? I wear a 24 hour analogue dial wrist watch, with 24 on top. I'll admit, I sometimes wish I had chosen 12 on top, since it's more naturally to look at the watch during the day, and less so during the night. Since it more naturally follows - on quick visual inspection - what it would look like on a normal 12 hour analogue dial.
- giardia 4y agoSounds cool, would you care to link the make/model?
- Svip 4y agoIt was the only distributor of 24 hour analogue wrist watches I could find, where the prices were reasonable, is called AAA Watch Club.[0] Mine is specifically from the Military Time Collection, called Military Dress, I believe.[1] Unfortunately, the specific model appeared to be sold out right now. 0 - https://www.aaawatchclub.com/ https://www.aaawatchclub.com/ 1 - https://www.aaawatchclub.com/military-time-watches_5to6.html#24mblkm3 https://www.aaawatchclub.com/military-time-watches_5to6.html...
- gus_massa 4y agoIt would be nice to have a permalink to a version with my customized list of time zones. I imagine it would be useful to send it for recurring meetings with the same set of persons.
- ydant 4y agoI tend to use worldtimebuddy.com as a very practical way of representing timezones when scheduling things. As cool as this pole clock is, it's not as useful to my mind as the more linear representation worldtimebuddy.com uses.
- gus_massa 4y agoI think I used https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ (or a very similar site) a few times, but the clock version looks more nice.
- PascalPixel 4y agoThis would indeed be great to have... Then it's also easier to adopt the thing for team! Good idea!
- rauschermate 4y agoFor this exact problem I build this Chrome extension (free) - have a new tab set for the timezones where you have co-workers. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cityzen/hfdldnggnfnelaooajfjkglalbdpfoah https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cityzen/hfdldnggnf...
- tensorturtle 4y agoThis is great! Now I wish there was a wristwatch (Apple Watch face?) that could do this as well.
- antcas 4y agoSlick design. Love that it doesn't try to do a million things. I think this would be really nice as a smartwatch face or an iPhone widget.
- HL33tibCe7 4y agoYes. This is a very “Apple” design (and that is high praise).
- PascalPixel 4y agoThank you!
- PascalPixel 4y agoThank you!
- throw0101c 4y agoIf anyone wants to wear a 24-hour dial on their wrist: * https://romeoswatches.com/the-5-best-24-hours-watches-buying-guide/ https://romeoswatches.com/the-5-best-24-hours-watches-buying... * https://svalbard.watch/pages/Svalbard_24-hour_watches.html https://svalbard.watch/pages/Svalbard_24-hour_watches.html * https://vintagewatchinc.com/24-hour-watch/ https://vintagewatchinc.com/24-hour-watch/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_analog_dial#Watches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_analog_dial#Watches
- quickthrower2 4y agoSomeone could create a Fitbit clock to do this too!
- dhbanes 4y agoOr any GMT watch.
- PascalPixel 4y agoWowzers I love these one-hand 'slow' watches! https://svalbard.watch/pages/Svalbard_24-hour_watches.html https://svalbard.watch/pages/Svalbard_24-hour_watches.html I hope I can get Pole Clock on Apple Watch, wish they allowed custom watch faces!
- FredPret 4y agoThere are two options - the Solar and World Time faces are 24h
- amelius 4y ago> Apple Watch, wish they allowed custom watch faces! Seriously? Apple does not allow this?
- userbinator 4y agoIt shouldn't be surprising, that's very typical of Apple.
- 4y ago
- mauskin 4y agoYou could make it lighter by removing even hour marks, like so https://codepen.io/kirillmyshkin/full/dyRQOda https://codepen.io/kirillmyshkin/full/dyRQOda
- PascalPixel 4y agoOh that's nice and light indeed!
- verdenti 4y ago[dead]
- mixcocam 4y agoBasic yet super powerful.
- adg001 4y agoCongrats, this is so handy (pun intended)! :-) Please consider adding a custom watch face to the Coros watches such as the Vertix. Also consider that there are timezones offset by 30 mins.
- ComputerGuru 4y agoReally cool idea. The Statue of Liberty glyph for NYC is extremely difficult to make out (on mobile, at any rate). I would much prefer NYC. Also not sure why NYC has to be special, I would have thought UTC would the special one.
- codetrotter 4y agoYeah me too struggled a lot to make out that it was the Statue of Liberty
- HL33tibCe7 4y ago+1, just use NYC please
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gus_massa 4y agoI think it's more like showing a cool feature than an actual case where it is super useful.
- PascalPixel 4y agoAye! I had a user request flag emojis for countries, so I popped the statue of liberty in for NYC to show the feature of naming :)
- diimdeep 4y agoBlur behind menu kills integrated GPU.
- PascalPixel 4y agoKilled it just for you <3
- oliverdunk 4y agoVery cool! Similar idea: https://www.teamlab.art/w/clock/ https://www.teamlab.art/w/clock/
- PascalPixel 4y agoThat's the closest I've seen! 2004! Wowza!
- pcrh 4y agoSo intuitive and simple, it's hard to imagine this representation of time zones hasn't been conceived of before. But perhaps that's the definition of "genius"...
- PascalPixel 4y agoT_T that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me
- sails 4y agoMinute hand covers the hour hand which seems like it could be improved. I added a country and I couldn't see if it had been added because it was under the minute hand.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 88stacks 4y agoI wish I could have this on my Apple Watch, but Apple does not allow us to make our own watch faces.
- PascalPixel 4y agoSame! All I want is this on my Apple Watch. Hey Apple; Call Me?
- a_d 4y agoLove this, PascalPixel! Hope you are well my friend. I smiled at this project and then saw it was made by you — it’s such a beautiful project that only you could have made :). Great idea and execution.
- PascalPixel 4y ago<3
- impish9208 4y agoThis is neat. I was wondering if the world map in the background could be rotated so that the city/timezone hands could (roughly) point to their respective locations. For instance, if you had the NYC and LAX hands, then the North American continent could be positioned between them with the former to the right and the latter to the left.
- PascalPixel 4y agoIt should be doing this at the moment unless there is some bug :(
- davchana 4y agoBug: All other cities use the Phrase I type in the box. I.E.for NYC, If I type JFK, it shows JFK on its hour hand. But the local time always shows LOS for me even if I type SFO. It should show SFO, as typed.
- PascalPixel 4y agoI've just removed the name on the local time hour hand entirely
- russellbeattie 4y agoMy OCD can't take the alignment of the second hand to the numbers. The "bottom half" should be dynamic based on current sunrise/sunset data. Better yet, let me decide my own waking hours and put that bit on the bottom. Might as well make the favicon dynamic as well.
- PascalPixel 4y agoSorry for giving you the jitters... :( I like the favicon idea I might do that!
- layer8 4y agoThree suggestions: - Let users switch the primary time zone by clicking/tapping on an hour hand. - Display the true day/night line for the current time zone. - Visualize the different dates (angle between the date line and 24 hours). Maybe color the hour hands differently when he date differs.
- hakcermani 4y agoCongratulations on this and pretty cool design. I just got the map:clock for ios which shows a map with different city times. One feature in that is to be able to do what if .. a slider to modify the times and see the time at different locations. A slider or rotary dial to change the times would be a good feature for planning. Bookmarked ur clock ! Feature requests if i may pls ! 1) Adjust the time with a slider or dial 2) Put the second hand outside the dial 3) Same for min hand or show hide the min hand -Merci!
- PascalPixel 4y agoMight do all these things!
- IIAOPSW 4y agoI've learned far to often that the international date line is not just tinder for expats. Can you put something to indicate the date on the timezones. Something just like your day/night indicator which tells me that on one side of the line is December 31 2022 and on the other side is January 1 2023.
- PascalPixel 4y agoThat's a good idea, I guess for now you're forced to add Tonga as a makeshift indicator! It's Tonga time!
- abdullahkhalids 4y agoHow can I tell at a glance which timezones have the same date, and which ones are a day behind or ahead? For instance, I can't tell if Tokyo has the same date as NYC or not.
- oars 4y agoThe clock shows 24 hours, and we know that NYC always behind Tokyo; you can just tell this from the arms of the clock. If it's 7:30am now for Tokyo and NYC is showing 5:30pm, we know that Tokyo is obviously a day ahead.
- abdullahkhalids 4y agoOf course, I can calculate. I am not interested in calculating. I am interested in the display just telling me.
- PascalPixel 4y agoThe moment the date passed is midnight, the bottom of the clock, using your local hour hand it should be intuitive enough to see which timezones have passed that point, without calculation
- bondolo 4y agoI like it and am interested to see how this evolves. I would love it to replace the simple clock on my iPhone screen. For my own purposes I would like to see accurate day/night line that moves with the map.
- PascalPixel 4y agoMe too! Issue is that different longitudes have different sunrise/sunset times, so I went with an arbitrary cut down the middle to get a rough idea of how people in other timezones are feeling right now (tired, close to dark, etc)
- perilunar 4y agoSunrise/sunset times do vary with longitude (depending on how close you are to the centre of the timezone you 'should' be in, and also summer time), but the biggest variation is with latitude. Especially near the solstices like now.
- fildon 4y agoHuh, I built a 24 hour clock as part of this mini project: https://fildon.me/time-after-time/ https://fildon.me/time-after-time/ Notably, after the initial page load I don't use any JS to update the hand positions. It's entirely static SVG elements.
- myself248 4y agoOooooooooo, sweep second hands. Broadcast radio people are _obsessed_ with sweep second hands, since it's how they all learned to time their announcements to end right as the next program segment begins. If you sold a cheap tablet that did nothing but that, and synced to NTP with a programmable display offset (some stations run 5 seconds ahead of real time to deal with encoder delay, for instance), station managers would beat a path to your door.
- PascalPixel 4y agoLove the face that includes 7 days! Very minimalistic!
- userbinator 4y agoBefore visiting the site, I thought this was a physical device.
- olonn 4y agoyou ever catch a flight from LAX to NEW?
- PascalPixel 4y agoYou can rename them to 'GAH!' and ':)' in the Settings! Happy flying!
- bombolo 4y agoBut not all countries' local time differs from UTC by multiples of 60 minutes. See Iran.
- tommica 4y agoReally cool - would love to move the Tokyo time and see the other hands move in accordance, to see what 15 there is in my place
- PascalPixel 4y agoThat's a great idea! I'll add that tomorrow!
- mastazi 4y agoI love the concept, dense information in a relatively small area. I would love if it had markings for minutes/seconds. With the 12 hour clock each hour marking corresponds to an integer amount of minutes or seconds (e.g. the marking "1" is 5 seconds/minutes, "2" is 10 seconds/minutes etc) But with a 24 hours one, this happens only every 2 hours ("13" is halfway between 2 and 3 seconds/minutes, "14" is 5 seconds/minutes) so I'm finding it hard to read minutes and seconds.
- aszen 4y agoInstead of dividing by two equal halves day and night, make this dependent on sunrise and sunset of the location, would be helpful to know at a glance the actual day hours and night hours
- techdragon 4y agoI’d love that this too. It’s one of the little details I’ve gone to appreciate about my Apple Watch, how all the day night features (at least seem to, I’ve not exhaustively debugged it) use correct day, night, twilight, etc, based on my current location.
- perilunar 4y agoI built a clock that does just that. It also shows twilight times and the position and phase of the moon: https://sunclock.net/ https://sunclock.net/
- paulcapewell 4y agoThis is stunning. Thanks!
- ernsheong 4y agoIf you turn on midnight on top, then the minute hand becomes inverted and counter intuitive, need to fix?
- rauschermate 4y agoVery nice work! Couple months ago I built a Chrome extension solving the same problem but little bit differently. New tab displays the timezones + a nice picture and weather of the cities you choose. It's completely free if anyone is interested: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cityzen/hfdldnggnfnelaooajfjkglalbdpfoah https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cityzen/hfdldnggnf...
- masswerk 4y agoHere's my helpful little time thingy (not a live clock, but let's you set arbitrary dates): https://www.masswerk.at/time/convert/ https://www.masswerk.at/time/convert/
- city41 4y agoThis is cool. Possibly move the black hands to the back so they don't obscure timezones? https://i.imgur.com/vjWs8mr.png https://i.imgur.com/vjWs8mr.png
- crtasm 4y agoThis would be useful for me if I could hide the minute and second hands. Nice work!
- cryptonector 4y agoThis is wonderful! Suggestion: - have an option to pick one TZ to be at the "12 o'clock" position (click on the hour hand of a TZ to rotate the whole clock so that TZ is a the top) - then a TZ is selected, show time deltas on the other TZs' hour hands - allow arbitrary rotations so one can place any particular hour at the "12 o'clock" position