8 ms·
I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated
- pseudohadamard 2mo agoThere have been mass-produced don't-need-setting clocks for just under a hundred years now, the first Jaeger-LeCoultre Atmos clock, https://atmos-atelier.de/en/atmos-uhr/ https://atmos-atelier.de/en/atmos-uhr/, being produced in 1928. You don't wind them up, you move a lever across to unlock them and then they keep running by themselves. The du Millénaire model won't need resetting until 3000AD, although perhaps that range may be a tiny bit optimistic.
- c22 2mo agoHow does it handle DST?
- ghostly_s 2mo agoThese aren't even self-setting, let alone self-adjusting. They are merely self-winding.
- defrost 2mo agoIn fairness "merely self-winding" is quite the existential ambition for some. * http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/mouse.html http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/mouse.html
- PunchyHamster 2mo agoWhat are you talking about, those will drift out of accuracy in a month "setting the clock" means adjusting time, not powering
- x86x87 2mo ago+/- 1 minute for month? holy smokes. does not qualify as self setting.
- TheOtherHobbes 2mo agoHooking that up to NTP would be quite a project.
- skippyfish 2mo agoI can't decide how I feel about this article. On one hand, it's great. It's great that the author wanted to get something done, and thanks to the marvels of modern tech, they could do it with very little effort. But on the other hand... gosh, this was about the simplest software engineering challenge imaginable (toggle some I/O pins) and the simplest design task imaginable (make a featureless rectangular box). And the author - a technologist! - isn't just saying "I wanted to try out some new tech". They're saying "this was too hard, I needed help from an LLM" ("would absolutely not be able to meet this challenge", "hit another wall"). And that... I mean, I just don't know what to make of this. Were we always like this? Are LLMs making us like this? Is it good? Is it bad?... and don't give me the calculator analogy...
- lee_ars 2mo agoTo be fair, I did the research, the BOM, the systemd service and timers, the packaging, most of the installer, and the deployment pipeline myself. It's just the python and the Fusion modeling I needed LLM help with. Coding beyond bash scripting is just not something I'm good at, and at 48, I've kind of accepted that it's not ever going to be no matter how hard I try.
- Retr0id 2mo agoEdit: retracted, but left up for context The article itself appears to have had help from an LLM, too.
- jherskovic 2mo agoGo look at the editorial policy from Ars. Lee just writes like that; it's his style, it always has been.
- lee_ars 2mo agonope. i was using em-dashes and semicolons before they were cool.
- Retr0id 2mo ago
- x86x87 2mo agoso basically NTP!
- mjevans 2mo agoI feel this article's premise too much. That's exactly the sort of clock I wanted to get my mom as a gift. Why is it so dang impossible to find a not trash simple LED clock that's 'large print', 'the right color', and not annoyingly too bright? A deluxe model might include a day of the week bar or dot and a month / day in month number (smaller than the time, mostly people care about the time)
- incompatible 2mo agoI think too bright would be an issue with any LED display. Even lights on my modem in a different room are a bit much, I turn it off at night.
- allannienhuis 2mo agoI use the clock feature on my iPhone (pretty sure there's equivalents for android), where if your phone is horizontal and charging, the lock screen shows one of several large clock face options. I 3d printed a phone stand for it. It's sensitive to both light levels and motion - so it's completely black when there is no motion detected. If you happen to wake up at night and open your eyes, everything remains dark. If you turn to look at your phone/nightstand, it usually turns on the display. Sometimes I need to wave my hand a bit. The balance is pretty good. I choose the giant Comic Sans type numerals as I wear glasses and that makes it still legible for me. [edit - it's called 'standby mode']
- geerlingguy 2mo agoI've had the same struggle. There are some decent LED clocks with up to 1" displays (high), but any further and you get weird colors or glaringly-bright displays. The best options are expensive clock displays from like Time Machines, MasterClock, etc... but they are not cheap and not meant for consumers.
- ryanhecht 2mo agoI knew if I scrolled through the comment section I'd find geerlingguy!
- Frost1x 2mo agoI’ve had a Phillips “atomic” alarm clock beside my bed for 23 years that just sets based on radio signal and auto restores if the power is lost, to which it has a backup 9v battery. There’s a time zone setting offset slider and a DST slider. I basically touch it twice a year, maybe another if I move time zones. I’ve only had to touch it for DST (never switched time zones). Takes me conservatively 10 seconds to find and flip, so it’s taken me 460 seconds or a little under 8 minutes in the past 23 years to do time adjustments. While these efforts are definitely fun hobby projects, there are cheap reliable solutions out there with minimal intervention that consume the NIST radio signal for time. Just for anyone interested who wasn’t aware there’s some “old school” time broadcast solutions out there too besides NTP: https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-distribution/radio-station-wwvb https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-di...
- codazoda 2mo agoI was going to mention an Atomic Clock. I use one in an RV and it sets itself even outside of cell phone range. I know it uses a radio signal of some type but I have no idea how it works. It rights itself within a few minutes of time changes, battery loss, or the like.
- ksenzee 2mo agoIt's fascinating reading if you're interested in finding out the details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWV_(radio_station) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWV_(radio_station)
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoWe’ve come full circle. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46952384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46952384 https://github.com/tanvach/clocksync https://github.com/tanvach/clocksync https://github.com/kangtastic/timestation https://github.com/kangtastic/timestation https://github.com/hzeller/txtempus https://github.com/hzeller/txtempus WVB: A Tiny WWVB Station - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13258631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13258631 - December 2016 (49 comments) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=wwvb&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- Animats 2mo agoIt's a clock. Does it really have to have remote updating, a command line interface, an Internet connection, and HomeKit integration? That's too IoT. I have three La Crosse clocks that run off the NIST time signal out of Boulder, CO, and need their AA battery replaced maybe once a year. The real challenge is running such a thing on a small battery for a year. I once made a small clock that displayed "A LITTLE AFTER SIX" and such, changing its text every five minutes. Needed a power connection, though.
- dgacmu 2mo agoI'm close to DIYing it also. I have two of the la crosse clocks. One works well. The other consistently fails to update. It would be cheaper to buy a new one to see if it's a dud or that location, but I already gave up on it and modified it to have a programmable LED strip integrated into it to visually indicate to my son when it was ok to get up for the day (before he could read a clock). So, ironically, I've ended up with a non-automatic atomic clock that instead contains a raspberry pi pico w that speaks ntp and has a programmable LED strip. That I have to manually set every DST transition, although the LED controller handles it just fine.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- SV_BubbleTime 2mo agoI feel like if you were gonna overthink this, you could’ve done something really cute and clever. Like an AI that stares at the window and figures out which angle the sun is coming in, then makes a determination on what time it must be. Then while it’s not sunny or can’t figure it out, it has dead reckoning, but it’s constantly looking at angles of shadows that determine if the time has drifted.
- NopIdoN 2mo agoIt would just start counting
- miladyincontrol 2mo agoI just use one those awtrix clones made by ulanzi, multiple open source firmwares for it since esp32 based. NTP, http api for displaying alerts, and mqtt support No need for me to reinvent the wheel, works a treat mounted above my monitor
- russdill 2mo agoThis really screams esp32/esphome, and as you'd expect, there are already dozens upon dozens of such projects https://github.com/mfactory-osaka/ESPTimeCast https://github.com/mfactory-osaka/ESPTimeCast
- sasaf5 2mo ago"One, the path not taken, started with an Arduino or Arduino-like microcontroller. The other began with a Raspberry Pi or Pi-like computer-y thing. I went with the Pi, variously using both a Raspberry Pi Zero W and Zero 2 W." Ok, so instead of bumping your clock +- one hour twice a year you preferred distro upgrades?
- autarch 2mo agoI've been using an old iPad as a clock for a while. The "Clocks" app I installed lets me configured 5 different alarms (quite handy since my week varies a lot).
- sudb 2mo agoThis reminded of this other clock project: https://mitxela.com/projects/precision_clock_mk_iv https://mitxela.com/projects/precision_clock_mk_iv Also: I reckon the closest best-value watch alternative that ticks most(?) of the author's boxes is the Casio GW-M5610-1ER, so long as you are inside a radio-controlled time area.
- MetaWhirledPeas 2mo agoCasio also has cheaper "wave ceptor" models that do this. If you get one from Japan you can get a nice-looking rectangular model.
- sudb 2mo agoI mentioned this specific model because it also has Tough Solar which should mean much longer between battery replacements!
- craftkiller 2mo agoEdit: I was wrong! original post below: > Battery-backed self-setting “atomic” clocks that get their updates via the cosmic ether have been a thing for years and get me most of the way there, but damned if I could find one with a red seven-segment display that I liked (maybe someone else’s search kung-fu is better than mine?) I found this with ~5 minutes of searching. I think it meets your critera: https://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Digital-Alarm-AccuSet-Automatic/dp/B089ZMSR39 https://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Digital-Alarm-AccuSet-Automatic... (Regardless, cool project! I think yours still looks better than this one)
- Jtsummers 2mo agoThe clock you've linked is not an atomic clock. It has a pre-programmed clock with a battery keeping it going. If that battery dies, you still have to set the time manually.
- craftkiller 2mo agoOh you're right! I was tricked by "AccuSet technology automatically sets the correct time when plugged in. No programming, no confusing buttons"
- martheen 2mo agoI read up the manual before realizing the vaunted tech is simply a battery backup and setting the clock in the factory.
- montroser 2mo agoI want a beautiful eink clock that gets its time from gps/gnss. It seems too much to have to collect a clock to wifi. Just turn it on and it should work.
- dgacmu 2mo agoIndoor signal reception problems though
- _carbyau_ 2mo agoDepending on your trust of societal infrastructure, I got a DAB radio clock that sets time from the radio.
- skippyfish 2mo agoIndoor GPS reception is spotty, especially in urban / high-rise environments, so I don't think that's a realistically marketable product. Not unless you some have some window- or balcony-mounted probe, which would then require battery changes (although I suppose you could make it solar-powered).
- lmz 2mo agoThere already are clocks with GPS (but maybe not eink): try searching for seiko space link clocks eg https://www.sakurawatches.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=12025 https://www.sakurawatches.com/index.php?route=product/produc...
- matthewfcarlson 2mo agoThis is what I’m working on right now. It lasts about 3 months on battery updating every minute, except every five at night. I’ve been meaning to switch to a word clock to make it last longer.
- weedfroglozenge 2mo agoIf you think you need your alarm clock to be accurate down to the subsecond, you need to talk to someone about your anxiety.
- JoeDaDude 2mo agoLED segments may be nice, but why not go full out Nixie tube? There are several kits out there, but for the DIY ethic, you can add WWV sync - and even watch the synchronization process - with this fellow's project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smUwbzA9SEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smUwbzA9SEo
- thesuitonym 2mo agoNixie tubes are cool but they're also significantly more expensive, take up more space, and are more prone to failure.
- FpUser 2mo ago>"...but damned if I could find one with a red seven-segment display that I liked..." Funny but I have one which updates time "via the cosmic ether", has big red 7-seg LEDs and as cherry on top it has laser LED based projector that displays same big red 7 seg digits on whatever surface one points it to - ceiling in my case. I bought it decades ago in RadioShack
- tonmoy 2mo agoWouldn’t it make more sense to build a GPS clock?
- system2 2mo agoIt wouldn't be a long HN post then. With very little coding on an ESP32 + NEO-6M GPS Module and a small screen, you'd have a GPS clock in less than 30 minutes of work.
- rekabis 2mo agoI think a single clock-output-only microcontroller would be nifty. Something where you can save settings, such as NTP servers and an all time change dates, but that’s it. Pair it with PoE Ethernet and you wouldn’t even need a power supply, only an Ethernet jack in the wall. With the right display you could make it super thin.
- bombcar 2mo agoPOE clocks are SURPRISINGLY expensive. https://www.american-time.com/shop/?fwp_product_brand=power-over-ethernet https://www.american-time.com/shop/?fwp_product_brand=power-... Someday, my precious, someday. (My dream clocks would have a smooth-sweeping second hand, no ticking (silent) and be PoE and NTP.)
- nkvoll 2mo agoI have these, which has the feature-combination you asked for: https://www.bodet-time.com/products/clocks/metal-analogue-clocks/profil-730.html https://www.bodet-time.com/products/clocks/metal-analogue-cl... My main gripe with them is that they reset at midnight (plus every now and then), and take 5 minutes to adjust themselves. Unfortunately I’ve caught them a few times just showing a seemingly arbitrary time as well. This has always corrected itself after a few hours, but still.. It’s very nice looking clocks, but the reliability is just too low for my liking, as I don’t feel confident enough just looking at them that they currently show the exact actual time.
- linehedonist 2mo agoThe atomic time radio station WWVB does in fact broadcast a daylight saving time bit. A good atomic time clock should accurately update for DST (though Amazon reviews for a clock like this one is pretty mixed: https://www.amazon.com/Crosse-Technology-617-249-Curved-Atomic/dp/B01M300T44 https://www.amazon.com/Crosse-Technology-617-249-Curved-Atom...)
- wpm 2mo agoMy La Crosse wall clock does support the DST bit, the switch on the back only sets whether you live somewhere that recognizes it or not. Twice a year I try and stay up to watch the clock hands zoomin around during the changeover
- dabinat 2mo agoThere are lots of modern alarm clocks that pair via Bluetooth to your phone and auto-set the time from the phone’s time. No internet connection or NTP server needed.
- ButlerianJihad 2mo agoBut a smartphone's time is set how? Via the mobile network (NITZ) or NTP (SNTP)! And what protocol is going across the Bluetooth connection but SNTP? In NTP terms, your alarm clock is now in a stratum below the smartphone, and with only one source of truth, not a good situation.
- wpm 2mo agoGiven that most alarm clocks only show hours and minutes, I'm not sure micro or nano second accuracy really matters. Provided my alarm clock is within a few minutes of the correct time I don't really care.
- dabinat 2mo agoI meant the clock itself doesn’t need an internet or local network connection, with which it could do things other than syncing the time.
- ButlerianJihad 2mo agoThen I think this is a trap to get some kind of proprietary app onto your phone. The clock could set itself from radio signals: standards-compliant. The clock could have WiFi or Ethernet and use [S]NTP: standards-compliant. The clock could have a SIM and use NITZ: standards-compliant. But BT it is. So now rather than having a dependency on standard or generic resources, it requires a BT pairing with the right kind of phone Ridiculous.
- lee_ars 2mo ago> Then I think this is a trap to get some kind of proprietary app onto your phone. This was my thinking as well, and why I rejected the idea. I'm not installing some rando company's information-harvesting data-selling garbage app on my phone to do something that the clock should do itself.
- t-writescode 2mo agoAll these other responders. Goodness. It’s a clock. It’s a fun little project they made *FOR FUN!*. Did everyone forget that hackers and engineers like to have fun? Seriously. Someone at Open Sauce this year made a friggin CRT-based VR headset. Why? Why not. Did we forget where we came from? Does everything have to be optimal?
- pudgywalsh 2mo agoThe author's primary lament is clocks that cannot withstand power flickers, yet every sub-$10 mains voltage clock from Walmart and Target that I've ever seen will take a 9V battery to make them resilient against such power interruptions. Might want to flip the clock over and check for a battery door before starting next time.
- mark-r 2mo agoThat might do to keep it within a minute during power loss, and maybe that's good enough for most people. But if you really want to be worry-free you need something more high tech. It would be worth it for me not to have to touch it twice a year for DST.
- MathMonkeyMan 2mo agoThis is a harder problem than it seems. I've been thinking and reading about it for a side project, but haven't done much testing yet. There are a few places to get the current time: - on-board real-time clock (RTC) connected to a continuous power source (e.g. button battery) - GPS - Colorado WWVB signal (60 KHz), Frankfurt DCF-77 (77.5 KHz), Cumbria NPL (60 KHz) - the internet (NTP, HTTPS servers, etc.) - mobile internet (e.g. LTE) - estimate time elapsed between power cycles by tracking and storing IEEE 802.11 timing synchronization function (TSF) timestamps from nearby wifi routers. All of these are potentially problematic. The best option is the RTC. Buy a DS3231, hook it up to your microcontroller and a button battery, and forget about it for a few years. The only problem with these (besides the battery) is that they can drift pretty badly. The fancy ones account for temperature fluctuations and are accurate to ~2 ppm, which is one minute per year. Aside from the drift, it sucks to need an always-on dedicated IC just to know the time, especially if you don't always need to know the time. GPS is nice but it's hard to get a signal indoors, especially in a skyscraper far away from a window, as can happen here in New York. You also need a relatively bulky component and an antenna. The longwave radio signals (WWVB, DCF-77, and NPL) are neat and old and what "atomic clocks" use, but the signal is tiny and you need a sensitive long-running receiver, either with a gigantic antenna or a slightly less gigantic ferrite rod. Even then, one of those cheap atomic clocks might not sync at all unless it's placed near a window. The WWVB signal is also very weak in certain parts of America and at certain times of day, so your circuit might only get a bit of signal over the noise once or twice a day, which might or might not be enough to deduce the time. The plain old internet works fine, but then your power budget involves a wifi radio, though you only need to run it for a few hundred milliseconds per hour. You also need a wifi password, which is a pain to configure in an IoT device. Also, you wanted a clock, why does it need the internet? GTFOOH. Mobile internet is way overkill. The last idea is something I haven't tested fully, since my microcontroller (raspberry pi pico w) can't keep up with the "promiscuous mode" unofficially offered by its wifi chip. It's a neat idea, though: you're in an environment with wifi routers all around, and you want to guess the time elapsed since you last checked by listening, without credentials, to the chatter. With enough routers and some flash storage you can probably keep track of time, assuming the whole area doesn't get a power outage. That's my very long way of saying that keeping time is a solved problem but all of the solutions have drawbacks and none works perfectly.
- mrheosuper 2mo agoUsing a supercomputer to power a clock, now that is overengineering. I made a LED matrix clock using esp32 syncing time with ntp server every hour and an external RTC to do time keeping if my network is down, and it runs perfectly for years, with accuracy +-1s to time.is. Never have to do setting except the first boot to setup wifi.
- mikewarot 2mo agoI too find myself going down the time-nut rabbit hole. I want a perfect 10 Mhz reference, not necessarily a time of day clock. I was tempted to go the Atomic Clock route, based on actual cesium oscillators, having found a cheapish ($999) used CSAC on ebay[1]. However, once I started digging into the data sheets[2], I found something unacceptable, Pin 1, labeled "Tune", an analog tuning input. It was then that I learned that while the Cesium vapor cells were accurate, they aged, and drifted, unlike a properly degaussed and Zeeman harmonic calibrated Cesium Beam atomic clock, which is a primary standard. Further demotivating was learning they have a 5-10 year service life. That's a lot of money to pay for what's essentially a better OXCO. I'll stick with GPS disciplined oscillators for now. [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/327134074179 https://www.ebay.com/itm/327134074179 [2] https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/523/Microsemi_CSAC_Space_Datasheet_900-00744-007B_2-1393126.pdf https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/523/Microsemi_CSAC_Space_...
- o_enix_o 2mo agoFascinating, can you share why you need a 10Mhz reference?
- threeio 2mo ago(for me) Sometimes your job might make you run reference time for a large service provider... and then you need multiple reference signals... and then you realize you have spares that are going to be thrown away... and suddenly your home lab becomes way too geeky for you to admit to 99.999999989% of your friends... unless they also are on the same time email list as you ;)
- system2 2mo agoJoke's on you, my Garmin Instinct syncs with GPS automatically, and I never set it.
- wpollock 2mo agoIn 1982 I purchased a GE analog alarm clock which plugs into an electric socket, has a gentle backlight and a snooze button. It cost 4-5 dollars. This clock still sits on my nightstand. The backlight stopped working years ago, the cheap plastic case is cracked, the numbers on the dial from 12 to 5 have crumbled away. But it keeps perfect time! It is also silent (no ticking at all, no quartz crystal) and has no battery to charge or worry about leaking I'd pay quite a bit for a replacement, but such clocks haven't been made in over 30 years. An "atomic" clock is cool, but the signal doesn't reach where I live.
- graton 2mo agoYou can use this webpage on your phone to set an "atomic" clock. https://timestation.pages.dev/ https://timestation.pages.dev/ I use it when the daylight saving time switch occurs as not all of my clocks will get the time every night. But this isn't so useful if you never can receive the signal.
- lowbloodsugar 2mo agoCould it not just be an iPhone on its side at this point?!
- lee_ars 2mo agoAsked and answered in the article comments, but briefly, I don't keep my phone in the bedroom at night, so no.
- breppp 2mo agoI don't know how practical but I always thought of extending the Wifi protocol with a clock broadcast That way all the microwaves of the world could listen in and update their clocks accordingly
- amelius 2mo agoBut how do you make it secure? Add a signature with a fixed key?
- breppp 2mo agoThe issue is which time signature do you trust without selecting an SSID, maybe by power? But I agree this can be an issue albeit small one in my opinion
- ButlerianJihad 2mo agoConsensus Time https://m.xkcd.com/2594/ https://m.xkcd.com/2594/
- martheen 2mo agoNokia proposed using SIB9 5G time transmission as time syncing in clocks, the idea being that transmission is available openly even for non-subscriber. Softbank later proposed commercializing the service, which is unclear to me since surely the public transmission would be enough for casual users and anyone requiring more would already use full 5G to control the device anyway.
- bux93 2mo agoApparently at least Bluetooth has something called Current Time Service (CTS) (BLE GATT service 0x1805). If you pair a cheap "smartband" to a phone, it'll set itself, even without using any apps. Neat! I guess it uses CTS?
- thesuitonym 2mo agoWhy bloat Wi-Fi with a clock signal when we already have a perfectly cromulent network time protocol?
- madhu_ghalame 2mo ago[dead]
- lee_ars 2mo agoDid you peek at the project's repo? The Ars piece is more of a narrative write-up; the repo has the step-by-step runbooks that I tried to ensure were beginner-friendly.
- bambax 2mo agoThose kinds of projects are super fun, and the writing here is good, so congrats to the author. That said, why do people need clocks? I usually know the time, day or night, within 30 minutes or so, and if I need to know the exact time (which happens rarely if ever), I look at my watch. There are zero clocks in my home. I would find it quite aggressive to have a big display that tells me exactly what time it is. Come to think of it there is one clock in the kitchen, on the oven. It's usually never correct because it resets after any power flicker and nobody takes the time to set it back properly. This is a recent oven; it's surprising kitchen appliances still are so dumb.
- martheen 2mo agoAt this point it is almost pure nostalgia. Having one in the classroom or living room was crucial in my childhood because almost nobody have watches or any electronics that can tell time for that matter (computer? pfft, the school don't even have a single computer). Later on, when everyone has their own (which are also highly accurate due to tower/network regular syncing) on their phone, I noticed that moving to a new place/classroom/office no longer involve ensuring that we have a wall clock. Nice if there's one, but otherwise we don't care, and if the battery run out, we can't be arsed to buy one and just put it in the shelf. At this point appliances with accurate clock would only be those connected to the internet (because otherwise TLS won't work if they drifted long enough), dumb devices won't have battery-backed clock because that will cut a single cent of profit which obviously a tragedy that must be prevented at all costs.
- haritha-j 2mo agoI find value in it as a bedside clock, primarily for the alarm.
- thesuitonym 2mo agoI like my bedside LED clock. It produces very little light, but allows me to figure out what time it is when I wake up--handy in the winter months when it's pitch black until well after I should be at work. Did I wake up in the middle of the night and so should go back to bed, or did I wake up close to my alarm and might as well start getting ready? I can check without blasting my retinas with my phone which, even at the lowest screen setting is still incredibly bright by comparison. It also gives me a beacon back to my bed if I get up to use the toilet. During the new moon my bedroom gets very, very dark, and it's useful to help me get my position. I have two clocks in my living room, they're nice because I don't want to wear my watch at all times. I have two because the previous owners of my house just left one, and I thought it looked nice so I left it up. It's actually been handy because wherever I am, wherever I'm facing, I can just glance up and know what time it is. Do I need any of these clocks? I guess not any of the specifically, but I use them frequently.
- stavros 2mo agoThis is a great writeup. I guess this is a common complaint, because I made the same thing! Mine is ticking, though, I used a clock with hands to do it. Also it doesn't tick regularly, so it's more of a Vetinari clock, but all clocks are God's children.
- bux93 2mo ago>damned if I could find one with a red seven-segment display that I liked (maybe someone else’s search kung-fu is better than mine?). The secret to finding an inexpensive radio-controlled clock/alarm/watch of your liking it to be German. They LOVE their Funk-Uhren! Sadly they typically only support Germany's DCF77 signal. You can also trivially find DCF77 receivers as components to use in a project.
- martijnvds 2mo agoDespite being a German signal, DCF77 can be received all over Europe, except the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland and for some reason, Crete. There's a map here: https://www.ptb.de/cms/en/ptb/fachabteilungen/abt4/fb-44/ag-442/dissemination-of-legal-time/dcf77/reach-of-dcf77.html https://www.ptb.de/cms/en/ptb/fachabteilungen/abt4/fb-44/ag-...
- MrGilbert 2mo agoThey are quite handy, though. Also, there is a (commercial, proprietary) weather protocol encoded on top. However, since the end of june, there are technical issues and no forecast is being transmitted. [1] [1]: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Meteotime-Weather-stations-supplied-via-DCF77-without-forecast-data-for-days-11359799.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Meteotime-Weather-stations-supp...
- haritha-j 2mo agoits a lovely ritual for me, setting the clocks twice a year. Makes you appreciate the passage of time (arguably a key feature of a clock), plus I enjoy the slight confusion in the morning, my phone says one thing, my bedside clock another, did I wake up an hour late or hour early? who knows.
- eqvinox 2mo agoThings can escalate further… PTP and/or PPS/GPS
- bArray 2mo agoIf you're in the UK, just use the MSF radio signal to sync your clock [1]. > The end result exactly matched my expectations—the best criterion for success that I can think of. With an LLM providing the heavy code lifting and the CAD work, I think I spent more time waiting on supplies to arrive than on anything else—something attributable to my lack of planning and the ease of next-day delivery. I think the author robbed themselves of a deeper understanding. [1] https://www.npl.co.uk/products-services/time-frequency/msf-radio-time-signal https://www.npl.co.uk/products-services/time-frequency/msf-r...
- dingaling 2mo agoUnfortunately, being a weak VLF signal, it's very susceptible to interference and screening. My MSF clocks at the front of the house keep perfectly synced, the ones deeper in the house wander hopelessly
- tenox7 2mo agohttps://github.com/tenox7/rpiclock https://github.com/tenox7/rpiclock
- lee_ars 2mo agoNice!! Excellent job. I like the idea of using one of the side dots to show NTP sync status, too.
- Haley_076 2mo ago[flagged]
- MrGilbert 2mo agoWhile diving deep into DCF77, I noticed there is something similar for the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWV_(radio_station) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWV_(radio_station) It just doesn't seem to get used that much, I suppose?
- alnwlsn 2mo agoThe shortwave WWV, not so much, except to check if your shortwave radio is working. Canada's shortwave CHU was shut down last month. The 60 kHz WWVB, yes. Plenty of cheap wall clocks have "atomic time" as it is marketed over here, meaning it has a radio receiver. You can pick one up at the grocery store. It depends on where you live if it actually works though. Where I live it works pretty well, but I've heard it does not work so well if you live on the east coast. That's quite a ways from Colorado.
- mark-r 2mo agoI think both WWV and WWVB were on the chopping block a few years ago, because the government decided it wasn't worth the $100,000 per year to keep them running. Thankfully that decision was overturned.
- thesuitonym 2mo agoIt's less common now, but you used to see them frequently. Most people didn't really know how they worked though, and had never heard of WWV or WWVB.
- kjjohnsen 2mo agoI too am fascinated by clocks and how hard it is to get one with the features you want. I settled into two solutions. One is the Bangle JS2, which is the most perfect smartwatch ever made if you use android phones. The other is any rooted Android phone. You get all of the power of the internet and infinite customizability. The only problem with the Android phone solution is battery life if the power goes out. For those looking at e-ink, the M5 paper is really solid as a clock.
- est 2mo agoI wonder if there's a chip that gathers time from LTE and GPS signals and time only. No complete protocol or handshake, just grab some close-enough time.
- s17tnet 2mo agoThis is discussed here [0]. It is possible and there are a couple of options but there are some catches: LTE is UTC only, GNSS requires much power. [0] https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/cheapest-way-to-get-datetime-from-gps/ https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/cheapest-way-to-get-datet...
- modinfo 2mo agoAs I saw you using raspberry pi zero w for just display clock, I though this is over engineering, simple Attiny18 with RTC can do this, but adding HomeKit makes this project somehow very interesting and thanks to NTP you have truly clock that never needs setting. Nice fun project! Edit: Maybe you can add speaker for internet radio to wake up?
- regnull 2mo agoYou can also use GPS as time source
- fuzzfactor 2mo agoI can appreciate this project even though for me I wanted a setting that never needed a clock ;) And things can escalate from there too . . .
- nancyminusone 2mo agoAye, but you do still need to set it. You just set the ssid and load the SD card instead of the time.
- codedump 2mo ago[dead]
- johann8384 2mo agoBuilding this on a custom PCB with an STM32F104 type MCU wouldn't be too much of a stretch from all the work that was already done here. I've done Nuttx on these for custom PX4 flight controllers and it wasn't that hard to work out.
- hn_submit 2mo agoI find it wasteful to make a simple clock running a full-scale Linux distro just to fetch and display the time. And it's running Python too, which is an interpreted language which is a 100 times slower than C or assembly. I didn't look at the code but if it's not interrupt driven it will be wasting even more power.
- mark-r 2mo agoThe beauty of living in the modern age is that there are times when you don't have to worry about being wasteful. This project is a perfect example. It's likely that the most power consuming part of the clock is the display.
- deweywsu 2mo agoHere, the author used a much less domain-specific LLM and it sounds like it produced good results. This made me wonder about other's experiences using LLMs to produce both CAD and schematics/pcb layout. Are there any good references people could leave of the tools people are using for this kind of AI-assisted design that are producing acceptable results today? I tried Flux.ai for electronics for example, and found it too confusing and not as helpful as I'd hoped. I'm hopeful that I can lean on generic AI tools in the future to augment some of the detailed design (while still applying thorough oversight and review of what's produced based on experience).
- Isamu 2mo agoAnyone have a rubidium fountain clock that you are looking to get rid of? Asking for a friend. Thanks.
- mark-r 2mo agoIs there anything which adjusts your base clock frequency based on NTP or anything else, so that when you are unable to correct the time it's still more accurate than an untuned free-running clock?