How many clocks are there in your home/dwelling?

  • Thread starter Astronuc
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In summary: There are three clocks in the bedroom: an alarm clock, a regular clock, and a radio clock. The alarm clock is set for Eastern Standard Time, the regular clock is set for Mountain Time, and the radio clock is set for a local station. There's also a clock in the living room, which is set for Pacific Standard Time. We have five clocks in our kitchen - microwave, stove, coffee maker, wall clock (battery powered with bird sounds), and over-the-counter clock radio. One in the living room - VCR. Three in the master bedroom - the satellite clock, and two radio
  • #36
I think there may be a uncountable number, not real sure and I am not going to take the time to count!

The ones that irk me are the niffty digitals that have a clock chip built in so they set themselves to the internal clock when you plug them in. They also know, or should I say KNEW, when Day light savings turned on and off. Now they think it is time to change, so I will have to manually reset them until DS really turns off. :yuck:

Whose idea was it to change anyway?

Here's another one for you, why is it that the app that sets my computer clock to NIST standard is NOT the same time as my wall clock that sets itself to WWV? They used to be, but for the last 6 -8 months they have been different by over a minute. :confused:
 
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  • #37
Here's another one for you, why is it that the app that sets my computer clock to NIST standard is NOT the same time as my wall clock that sets itself to WWV? They used to be, but for the last 6 -8 months they have been different by over a minute.

That is something you really should investigate! Your PC has its hardware clock, which will start to drift as the backup battery gets old. Then there is the software clock, which has an offset saved when you reset the time/date. Then you have apps which fetch server times, usually secondary standards. The best of them will fetch the time, adjusted for the server latency delays, and will calculate the PC clock drift. They apply a compensation that tracks the PC clock drift, keeping it correct between NIST-based updates.

Better than 1 second or so is good enough to predict a satellite coming above the horizon. Some internet operations require accuracy better than 200mS. I have seen a application called (Ish-Clock) which gives the time approximately, to within about 5 minutes or so, somewhat variable. Google finds this stuff. :smile:
 

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