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Casio G-Shock time sync radio

gshock.casio.com

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Re: Casio G-Shock time sync radio

#171

Post by MichaelZuo »

ilyt wrote: post #166
somat wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly speaking a touch screen is massively more complicated than a set of buttons. you now have billions of gates that have to be produced at nanometer scales in some of the most expensive factories on earth. The price to develop and manufacture a touch screen is many times that of a set of buttons. The fact that it is a generic interface drives the cost per unit down quite a bit. it does not hurt that the incredi…

> The price to develop and manufacture a touch screen is many times that of a set of buttons. It costs them $0 because consumers already expect a touch capable screen for infotaintment. > I just wish we ended up with aircraft style MFD's instead of touch screens. You know those things with a screen and a row of buttons along each side. Yeah it's a dream. Anything touch is annoying to use when driving. MFD-like also h…

> It costs them $0 because consumers already expect a touch capable screen for infotaintment.

Bingo, it would be a much different calculus if most potential customers didn't expect or want touch infotainment systems.

Re: Casio G-Shock time sync radio

#173

Post by paulmd »

firewolf34 wrote: post #9

Yes, as others have stated this is an old technology. I don't really understand why this is not more common in the modern day. it's not really that expensive to implement and they did it with analog chips back in the day... Why do we have to set the time on our clock radios or on our microwaves or whatever? Why don't they just always use this Tech. I don't understand. All you have to do is allow people to store an of…

another fun "we had a better solution in the past!" is using the 60hz AC sine wave as a time signal. The timebase is actually corrected for this use-case! there is absolutely no reason to use a piezo timer in any circuit that is plugged in to AC and the drift that typically occurs with piezos is so frustrating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency#Time_error_c...

Re: Casio G-Shock time sync radio

#174

Post by paulmd »

gh02t wrote: post #98
ilyt wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you...used them ? My Protrek basically doesn't sync if I'm at home, and as it tries to start sync after midnight the auto sync near-never works. I installed DCF77-emulator app on phone to get around it. My radio-synced clock works fine but comes with big (BIC lighter size but double the thickness) external antenna. Probably much worse in microwave that's somewhere inside the house and not near window > All you h…

Damn I had never thought of the possibility that you could easily battery back the clock in a microwave/oven/etc despite being fully aware that it's trivial to do. We get a ton of brownouts and I gave up on keeping the clocks set. I want it.

there's also another compromise, my stove will remember the last time it had AC power but it "loses" however many minutes it was out of power. And that can be implemented purely in non-volatile RAM (some kind of non-volatile CMOS register probably) without the actual piezo timing circuit (the clock itself can run off 60 hz utility frequency timebase). Just update the nvram once a minute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency#Time_error_c...

somehow it's way less frustrating to only have to adjust the clock 30 minutes or whatever. you're not gonna be standing there for five minutes holding the button, you know? even though in practice it's not that big a deal and doesn't happen that often, it's a little human nicety.

and if you don't have time to adjust the clock at that exact moment, you can just mentally correct "I was out of power for 30 minutes so it's 30 minutes slow right now" rather than having to remember "I lost power at 3pm so that's 12:00...".

Re: Casio G-Shock time sync radio

#175

Post by paulmd »

bayindirh wrote: post #129
somat wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly speaking a touch screen is massively more complicated than a set of buttons. you now have billions of gates that have to be produced at nanometer scales in some of the most expensive factories on earth. The price to develop and manufacture a touch screen is many times that of a set of buttons. The fact that it is a generic interface drives the cost per unit down quite a bit. it does not hurt that the incredi…

> Strictly speaking a touch screen is massively more complicated than a set of buttons. But, it's a commodity item, produced in many more numbers w.r.t. a A/C temperature/fan encoder w/custom shape. A bog standard Renault Clio touchscreen is comparable to a good (not high, not top) quality Raspberry Pi screen you can get from RS or AdaFruit. The screens on Opel Mokka I drove (it has two, one for dash, one for infotai…

kind of insane that a dollar here and there is significant on a $20k car (to premium vehicles like trucks/sports cars being $70-100k). but I guess $20k isn't the number that matters, it's $1 vs the profit margin of the vehicle which is of course much smaller.

Re: Casio G-Shock time sync radio

#176

Post by paulmd »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #80

I'm curious why we don't just use GPS's UTC time broadcast to set time? I understand that using GPS to track satellites and find location is power hungry, but I can't imagine that simply receiving a time and setting a clock is any more power hungry than this system.

you understand the reason, GPS units are expensive and take a lot of power ;)

the GPS module itself is probably bigger than most of these watches, and the module itself probably costs more than most of the watches too! (probably something like $100). even if you can power it, which, the power consumed is probably 3-4 orders of magnitude more than the watch.

on the other hand, you have a point about receiving a signal and setting the clock, and I wonder if you couldn't parasitically drive this off the cell network... is there a local reference clock signal in the cell system that you could pull timestamps from and set the clock? cell signals are much much stronger than GPS and don't require constantly tracking satellites to maintain a fix. and while you still need some RF components (as does this casio watch, it's still acting as a RF demodulator!) they can presumably be much simpler and cheaper and lower-power.

(edit: actually I see some people here commenting some watches apparently do exactly this, so your "use the time reference from a single satellite and accept the skew from lightspeed" idea probably does work, although it's a smartwatch and runs its battery quickly.)

really I think most people do not even need continuous updates though. This is something you could build into a "charge cradle" for the watch and have the time reference sent via a data carrier on the inductive charge signal. which does open GPS sync back up a little bit (although wifi/bluetooth would be cheaper and just as good for most people) since the GPS can live in the cradle too.

people are talking about solar watches etc and to be honest if you've got 1-2 years of battery life who cares about solar? Pop it on the charge cradle once a year and charge it inductively. Inductive charging might actually be simpler/cheaper than even those micro solar panels watches and calculators use, and everyone has gotten into the habit of charging their smart watches overnight anyway. And if you do that, it allows you to do the cosmetics of the watch however you want, since you're not tied to having a big solar panel in part of it.

Re: Casio G-Shock time sync radio

#177

Post by [deleted] »

Ekaros wrote: post #130
firewolf34 wrote: post #9

Yes, as others have stated this is an old technology. I don't really understand why this is not more common in the modern day. it's not really that expensive to implement and they did it with analog chips back in the day... Why do we have to set the time on our clock radios or on our microwaves or whatever? Why don't they just always use this Tech. I don't understand. All you have to do is allow people to store an of…

Just looking at those maps should explain part of it. There isn't enough coverage. So you end up with poor experience with substantial amount of people who do not get good signal. This would likely result in lot of returns, warranty claims and so on. Just not worth it in general.

[deleted]

Re: Casio G-Shock time sync radio

#178

Post by noAnswer »

Ekaros wrote: post #130
firewolf34 wrote: post #9

Yes, as others have stated this is an old technology. I don't really understand why this is not more common in the modern day. it's not really that expensive to implement and they did it with analog chips back in the day... Why do we have to set the time on our clock radios or on our microwaves or whatever? Why don't they just always use this Tech. I don't understand. All you have to do is allow people to store an of…

Just looking at those maps should explain part of it. There isn't enough coverage. So you end up with poor experience with substantial amount of people who do not get good signal. This would likely result in lot of returns, warranty claims and so on. Just not worth it in general.

> So you end up with poor experience

...as opposed to what? How is a blinking 12:00 a better experience?

Re: Casio G-Shock time sync radio

#179

Post by Gud »

Ekaros wrote: post #156
Gud wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 15+ years old G-Shock with this feature. When I was in Afghanistan in 2010, I would still occasionally get this signal. I suspect these coverage maps are quite conservative.

Occasionally isn't good. It either has to work consistently or not at all. If someone has wrong understanding what the time is and their clock goes to "wrong" time occasionally it is bad. And on other hand if marketed people expect such features to work. Even indoors or in basement. Next to window facing right direction in lucky meteorological conditions is tough ask for majority. Geeks will geek out when it works on…

I don't understand your point. My watch was not marketed to function in Afghanistan at all. It was made clear the towers are in the US(IIRC two of them), Berlin and Japan.

And I think few people expect their wrist watch to synchronize over radio in a basement... And if they are, they need to understand radio better.

There is little drift on my G-shock anyway. Probably it would still be extremely accurate if it hadn't synced at all during the 7 months I was there.

Re: Casio G-Shock time sync radio

#180

Post by lr1970 »

firewolf34 wrote: post #9

Yes, as others have stated this is an old technology. I don't really understand why this is not more common in the modern day. it's not really that expensive to implement and they did it with analog chips back in the day... Why do we have to set the time on our clock radios or on our microwaves or whatever? Why don't they just always use this Tech. I don't understand. All you have to do is allow people to store an of…

> Why do we have to set the time on our clock radios or on our microwaves or whatever? Why don't they just always use this Tech.

The main reason is lack of reliability or better to say strong dependency of reception success from location of the receiver. My G-shock watch never synchronizes when in kitchen but gets sufficiently strong signal in the bedroom. Wrist watches are more mobile and have better chance to be in a good signal reception spot at least once in a while. A microwave, on another hand, is stationary and if out of luck (weak signal) that it is permanent. Not a good solution for time sync (and possibly complains from dissatisfied customers).

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