Made one today that shows progress over the year, month, day, hour, and minute:
Wobbly clock
181–190 of 209 posts
Re: Wobbly clock
#182Made me think about the Swiss Railways clock that has the second hand completing the circle in 58.5 seconds; all the clocks on the network then wait for the sync signal from the “master clock". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock
The clocks in my elementary, middle, and high schools would do something similar. Not every minute, but every hour. At the top of the hour, when there was 15 seconds left, the second hand would make 3 second jumps until it hit the top, and then hold until the next hour started. I always thought that was a brilliant way to keep mechanical clocks in sync. And the system had been there since the 1970s, so it was well be…
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Re: Wobbly clock
#183Made one today that shows progress over the year, month, day, hour, and minute: https://neontime.surge.sh
Cool idea, but it feels wrong to me that it goes right to left — seems like it should move the other way.
Re: Wobbly clock
#184Made me think about the Swiss Railways clock that has the second hand completing the circle in 58.5 seconds; all the clocks on the network then wait for the sync signal from the “master clock". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock
Why 58.5 seconds?
To deal with any inconsistencies in the speed at which they complete the 58.5 seconds. If a particular defective clock takes 59.9 seconds instead of 58.5 it'll be just fine, as it will start going again when it gets the next minute pulse from the central system.
Re: Wobbly clock
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'd be a fun project to make a dial wall clock that uses GPS time.
GPS would be tricky to receive in a typical hotel or office lobby (i.e. far away from any windows at the ground floor, possibly in an urban canyon). In Germany (and in neighboring countries), radio-controlled clocks are quite common for this purpose, listening to DCF77 near Frankfurt [1]. Long wave seems to work a bit better than the L-band for indoor propagation, and it probably also helps that the transmit power is…
I think you can still buy NTP reference devices for your network that use GPS. So, the lobby of the hotel doesn't have to be within view of the sky, as long as their reference device is.
Re: Wobbly clock
#186This clock is great for teaching kids how to tell time! When learning to read a "circle clock", they have a heck of a time understanding what it means when the hour hand is almost but not quite pointing at a number. So when it's 3:45 they will say 4:45 because they know the big hand on 9 means "45" but they get confused because the little hand is almost pointing at 4. This clock solves that problem. Anyone know if I…
The real solution is they should say “a quarter to four”. ;)
When it's 2:00 and someone asks me what time it is, I say it's a quarter of 8:00.
Re: Wobbly clock
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Anyone know if I can get this as an Apple Watch face? Currently, 3rd parties can't create custom Apple Watch faces.
What's the point of a smart watch if you can't change the dial and face however you want? It's like when carriers wouldn't let you load your own ring tones on to your phone, because they didn't want to cannibalize their own ring tone sales.
>What's the point [..] if you can't change
It seems to be part of Apple's strategy, to focus on Out Of The Box experience, not on user configuration. And to the greater point? To make profit. The perfect product is not the point, nor is the perfectly satisfied customer.
Re: Wobbly clock
#188Here’s the author’s original post about the clock:
https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wobbly-clock/
This links to a Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/christianp/status/1250454284581457923
Which has at least one other interesting clock idea, this one with floppier hands: https://twitter.com/kangaroophysics/status/12508031830451814...
Re: Wobbly clock
#189Do the hands break after 10,000 seconds?