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They look like beautiful hardware. Have you considered using an ESP or NRF etc as the control processor to (optionally) enable WiFi and therefore NTP automatic
by blutack 5y ago
They look like beautiful hardware. Have you considered using an ESP or NRF etc as the control processor to (optionally) enable WiFi and therefore NTP automatic clock setting and daylight savings? It seems like something none of the commercial Nixie clocks have, and I don't really understand why? Maybe there's a commercial aspect I'm not appreciating. For me personally I like the idea of a clock always being dead on without needing manual sync.
I'd be happy to write the firmware for you for free clocks :)
- petro_vodopyan 5y agoThanks! yeah, I’m currently working on migration to ESP32. It has reasonable price and is feature-rich. Apart from the automatic NTP sync I like the idea of creating web or BLE app for managing setting etc (bye bye ugly IR remote and buttons) - everything in your phone now. And thanks for your offer - that would be great ;) By the way there is a Google forum with many other Nixie enthusiasts here https://groups.google.com/g/neonixie-l/ https://groups.google.com/g/neonixie-l/
- stavros 5y agoWait, how would you do automatic DST? I've made a small alarm clock for myself but DST is always a pain, and I'm not super jazzed about writing the entire logic myself.
- blutack 5y agoI do currently hardcode my time zone (although it could be done as a setting) so I suppose it's not 100% automatic...maybe with a geoip lookup! NTP gets you the date, so you just need a library or algo that maps your time zone into rules for what dates to change on and by how much. Luckily, one ships in the ESP32 sdk. I used something similar to the below, although adapting to my location. Works great for me. https://werner.rothschopf.net/microcontroller/202103_arduino_esp32_ntp_en.htm https://werner.rothschopf.net/microcontroller/202103_arduino... You would theoretically need to update your tz descriptor if your country rules changed. My countries rules never do so I've never worried about it. This could probably be worked around by periodically checking an endpoint for updates to the tzdb descriptor (like a Linux distro does via the package manager). Alternatively, you could just knock up a very basic web service which returns date/UTC time of next change and new UTC offset for a given timezone. Then poll once a day or whatever. For bonus points, don't use JSON because it's a pest to parse on the ESP. Or use http://worldtimeapi.org/ http://worldtimeapi.org/ and accept the third party dep.
- stavros 5y agoThat's fantastic, thanks! Hardcoding my timezone is no problem, as long as I don't have to change the offset manually every six months. Thanks!