13 ms·
Converting a $3.88 analog clock from Walmart into a ESP8266-based Wi-Fi clock
- kotaKat 8mo agoOf note, having recently shopped at Walmart for a self-setting alarm clock (what I once knew to be “atomic”): Apparently the entity today known as Sharp sells “AccuSet(tm)” branded clocks that “automatically set time”… but they’re just factory pre-set with a button cell and they include a slider on the bottom to set a timezone offset (only for US timezones). If you’re lucky, the clock’s battery is still good and the clock “set itself” out of the box several minutes late. If you’re unlucky - surprise, you get to manually set the time anyways. https://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Digital-Alarm-AccuSet-Automatic/dp/B089ZMSR39 https://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Digital-Alarm-AccuSet-Automatic...
- relaxing 8mo agoYou want a self-setting radio clock that receives the LF broadcast from WWVB. There was a kerfuffle a few years back about the funding for the station being cut, but luckily that did not come to be.
- orev 8mo agoThese clocks are irritating because they show up in the results when searching for “radio atomic clock” and similar, and it can be very hard to figure out if they actually use the WWVB radio signal. I’ve concluded that none of them do, because WWVB is only reliable in (most parts) of the US, and companies only want to make things that appeal to a global audience now. La Crosse seems to be the only one that makes them, and unfortunately most of their designs lack any style (i.e. they’re ugly).
- geerlingguy 8mo agoIt's like they hired a design firm in the early 00's and decided that design language is the peak of human horology... I wish they'd make a couple new designs.
- drivers99 8mo agoThere are actually other time signals around the world. I had a Casio wave ceptor (one with analog hands which it doesn't look like they sell anymore; I should have kept it). Anyway, looking at a model that's currently available (WV-200R, but there are 2 other models available), its manual says it gets signals from "Germany (Mainflingen), England (Anthorn), United States (Fort Collins), [and] Japan." I was curious so I looked those up: Mainflingen DCF77 77.5 kHz Anthorn 60 kHz Fort Collins WWVB 60 kHz Japan looks like they have Mount Otakayoda 40 kHz, and Mount Hagane 60 kHz. There are also some other countries that have time broadcasts (e.g. France. Anywhere else?) but not that that watch uses.
- bux93 8mo agoThere's also a station in Shangqiu City, Henan province, China, BPC 68.5 kHz Casio brands watches that receive all 6 stations as multiband-6, and older ones that don't have the Chinese signal as multiband-5. The analog display, chronograph watches like WVQ-M410-7AJF are delightful ; you can switch to timer mode and the main hands show the time ticking down (yes, they move counter-clockwise), and then switch back to normal timekeeping mode and the hands will move around the dial to set to the correct time again. Obviously at great expense to battery life, but it's solar powered. Unfortunately it's Japanese Domestic Market only, so you need to order it from a place like discovery mall japan. (The WVQ has a flimsy plastic - if you're willing to pay a lot more you could spring for the OCWS7000E ). Citizen has some GPS set watches. Radio time signals used by watches and wall clocks are all in the 60-77.6 Khz range, probably best suited to small receivers and low power - other radio time signals are higher frequency. In the US, WWVH broadcasts at 2.5MHz, 5Mhz, 10Mhz and 15Mhz.
- jonathanlydall 8mo agoClocks which are designed to be able to auto set their time in the US will actually also do the auto setting at least as far away as Johannesburg, South Africa. I know this because when my mother was visiting the US over a decade ago, she found a clock she felt was aesthetically perfect for her psychology practice room at her house. Twice a year the clock changes its time to be 10 hours (or thereabouts) behind, no doubt due to daylight savings change over. So she has to readjust the time whenever this happens which she says she doesn’t really mind.
- DesiLurker 8mo agomakes me wonder what if I just wanted to sync with nfc every once in a while. wifi seems overkill for this. maybe it could be done much cheaper with nfc sync witha phone twice a year?
- phh 8mo agoAn ESP32-C3 Super Mini can be found for below 3$ (cheapest I had was 1.58€). Since the original clock is 3.88$, it can't be that much cheaper.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8mo agoESPs are so cheap that you couldn't possibly save very much money, and the way economies of scale work it may or may not be cheaper to use NFC anyways.
- sowbug 8mo agoWe've been shopping for a simple bathroom clock to replace our final Amazon Echo and leave that increasingly dystopian ecosystem. There are some models that use Bluetooth on your phone to sync the time. I could imagine BLE being a good low-power and relatively stateless solution. But given our goals, we're not going to install an app on a phone just to maintain a wall clock. (I'd be fine if Android provided BLE time sync as a built-in service.)
- russdill 8mo agoHome assistant has pretty good BLE capabilities. But honestly, as has already been pointed out wifi is already really cheap.
- pantalaimon 8mo agoYou often have a radio clock source like DCF77 that all those radio controlled clocks use
- albertsikkema 8mo agoGreat idea!
- teraflop 8mo agoCool project! The most interesting part, IMO, is the "SRAM with EEPROM backup" chip. It allows you to persistently save the clock hands' positions every time they're moved, without burning through the limited write endurance of a plain old EEPROM. And it costs less than $1 in single quantities. That's a useful product to know about.
- sowbug 8mo agoI'm not sure if this is the same technology, but regardless it's also cool: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1897 https://www.adafruit.com/product/1897
- mftrhu 8mo agoNot quite - the chip the article refers to is the 47L04 [0], which is "just" NVSRAM built out of a RAM + EEPROM. I do agree on FeRAM being cool, though - I have a few I2C chips en route, and I can't wait to get my hands on them. [0] https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/47L04 https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/47L04
- qwertox 8mo agoThanks to both of you for bringing FRAM onto my radar!
- summa_tech 8mo agoYou could also consider MRAM. Which is available in larger sizes - up to 4 Mbit on SPI bus in the MR20H40, and 128 Mbit in EM128LXQ (but it gets unreasonably expensive when this big). https://www.everspin.com/family/mr20h40?npath=259 https://www.everspin.com/family/mr20h40?npath=259
- pjc50 8mo agoFRAM is extremely neat on paper, combining SRAM ish speeds with non-volatility, but adoption seems to be low. Possibly due to scaling issues. I've had a FRAM-based TI MSP430 in my random parts drawer for about a decade.
- jccooper 8mo agoSee also the "Ventinari clock": https://github.com/iracigt/ventinari-clock https://github.com/iracigt/ventinari-clock https://www.akafugu.jp/posts/products/vetinariclock/ https://www.akafugu.jp/posts/products/vetinariclock/
- sowbug 8mo agoIf you like this but don't want to get your hands as dirty, have a look at the Crazy Clock: https://www.tindie.com/products/nsayer/crazy-clock/ https://www.tindie.com/products/nsayer/crazy-clock/ I got one for my daughter. The erratic ticking eventually became a distraction when she was studying, so we have retired it for now. But we got a lot of amusement out of it.
- avidiax 8mo ago> Early clock - keeps time anywhere between 0 and 10 minutes fast. For those who like to set their watch ahead to avoid being late. This clock keeps you from trying to "compensate," because you never know how early it is at the moment. That's pretty genius for many ADHD-type folks. Only problem is a modern household has many clocks in view, so you'd need to commit to just not setting them.
- javawizard 8mo agoOh now that would be a fun version 2 challenge: have all the clocks in one household synchronize such that they're all early by the same amount at any given time. Easy enough for wifi enabled ones: a UDP broadcast to discover other clocks on the network, then sync how you will. For non-wifi-enabled clocks, perhaps something like a CH572 would do the trick: a $0.20 RISC-V microcontroller with BLE support that all the clocks in the same vicinity could use to talk to each other. You could really mess with your neighbors if they had the same clocks and you were within range...
- seg_lol 8mo agoYou don't already do this with the NTP servers under your control?
- javawizard 8mo agoIf I had any NTP servers under my control, I probably would :)
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- Spivak 8mo agoIf you want a pure software solution get yourself an old atomic clock and https://github.com/jj1bdx/WWV https://github.com/jj1bdx/WWV play some tunes to set the time.
- bityard 8mo agoThe repo you linked to is a WWV simulator, WWV broadcasts the time via _audio_ (double-sideband amplitude modulation) at various fixed HF frequencies. SOME clocks might be able to automatically receive and decode this signal, but not many. There is also a web version here: https://wwv.mcodes.org https://wwv.mcodes.org Radio controlled ("atomic") clocks get their signal from WWVB, a long-wave station in Colorado. Its signal is just a carrier and data is encoded via pulse-width modulation and phase modulation. People have built local, low-powered WWVB transmitters to sync their watches and so forth in areas where WWVB is hard or impossible to receive. It's not a good idea to build one of these unless you REALLy know what you're doing because radio signals can travel farther than you expect, and the FCC takes a rather dim view of intentionally broadcasting your own signal (to any distance) without a license to do so.
- buescher 8mo agoThere's a digital code as part of the WWV transmissions (!) but you're right that the typical "atomic" clock doesn't sychcronize to the HF stations. There are weak wwvb simulators out there as phone apps and such that depend on using EMI to sync your clock. Like the old AM radio bus noise music hack. https://github.com/kangtastic/timestation?tab=readme-ov-file#technical-details https://github.com/kangtastic/timestation?tab=readme-ov-file...
- riskable 8mo agoI want to see someone convert one of those cheap projection clocks like this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/La-Crosse-Technology-5-in-Color-Projection-Atomic-Digital-Alarm-Clock-with-Outdoor-temperature-616-146/203634255 https://www.homedepot.com/p/La-Crosse-Technology-5-in-Color-... The red projection is just the right brightness (at night) but it sucks that it's not wifi-enabled so you can't just get it to NTP sync (or hook up a GPS receiver). The projector part of the clock is a separate device that's attached to it via a ribbon cable. I would reverse engineer it myself but I haven't got the time. Ideally, I'd want a matrix of LEDs projected on to the ceiling so I could get more info than just the time. Such clocks exist but they're super duper expensive! Example: https://buyfrixos.com/ https://buyfrixos.com/
- lostlogin 8mo agoUndermining the spirit of HN: By the time you’ve spent a few hours hacking away and bought any parts, that price is probably not too bad.
- stavros 8mo agoThat's assuming you don't like hacking and would pay to not have to do it, which is generally not the case around here.
- lostlogin 8mo agoI’m think you can go further than that. Days spent modifying cheap electronics is absolutely encouraged.
- hackingonempty 8mo agoBuy the premade thing and hack something new.
- seg_lol 8mo agoCheap electronics are just the feed stock, the basis function for your new creation. Why start with raw matter when you can get fully formed matter for less.
- avidiax 8mo agoHow does this keep track with DST? Looking at the code [1], it looks like if the actual time is 1 hour ahead of the displayed time, then we get 10 pulses per second to leap forward. Otherwise, the clock stops running for an hour to fall back. https://github.com/jim11662418/ESP8266_WiFi_Analog_Clock/blob/master/AnalogClock.ino https://github.com/jim11662418/ESP8266_WiFi_Analog_Clock/blo...
- sowbug 8mo agoYou have two choices: either assume everyone is asleep at 2 am and won't notice when it happens, or else advance 11 hours. My LaCrosse clock does the latter.
- aidenn0 8mo agoI remember clocks in my school would sync up by all running forward to 12 at noon (and presumably midnight). I don't know if it was a radio or wired signal.
- gspr 8mo agoAnd that's pretty much fine for a project like this, seeing as most (all?) locations jump you between DST and not DST at night. So the clock will be off at most for an hour during the night.
- floatrock 8mo agoYeah, project needs a time-lapse video of their analogue DST transition event.
- Dachande663 8mo agoI'm currently making something similar but using a BKA30D-R5 (a dual stepper motor used in car dashboards) and a hall sensor to zero the hands.
- russdill 8mo agoYes, this project screams for some kind of sensor to detect when the hands reach some known position.
- Dachande663 8mo agoYeah, it's super quick to start with a MK I eyeball to set them, but having a sensor just avoids any drift. I got away with using one by taking a reading and moving the other hand to check they weren't on top of each other already, and then doing a full rotation between readings.
- dheera 8mo agoSome years ago I made a ESP-based clock that used 60 LEDs in a circle that project RGB shadows via a cone at the center. I used the same WeMos D1 Mini board. https://github.com/dheera/shadow-clock/ https://github.com/dheera/shadow-clock/
- bityard 8mo agoI remember seeing this on Hackaday. Very clever idea!
- MrVitaliy 8mo agoCute, but the original clock used to run on AA battery that needs a replacement every two years or so, and now it needs a power supply. Or some big battery recharge/replacement every few hours maybe days.
- debbiedowner 8mo agoHow different is this to something you can buy like: https://www.amazon.com/ihreesy-Movement-Mechanism-Silent-Replacement/dp/B0CCVVLG4J https://www.amazon.com/ihreesy-Movement-Mechanism-Silent-Rep... ?
- TechSquidTV 8mo agoWell I notice that one is $36
- xandrius 8mo agoOne is hacked and the other one is bought?
- freedomben 8mo agoHell yeah, this is some badass hackery, and the type of stuff I love seeing on HN. In the last decade or so as more and more stuff becomes locked down and hacker unfriendly, I've found myself longing for simple things I can hack on. If I ever get to a point where I don't have to work for a living, one of the things I'd like to do is build everything from little gadgets up to major appliances that are simple, reliable, and hackable for people who want to. It pains me that my appliances have full computers driving them but I can't get access to them. Kudos for this awesome work and phenomenal write-up!
- ortichic 8mo agoSorry if this is a dumb question, but do you guys not have radio controlled clocks outside of Europe? If I got it right, the only purpose of this project is to always display the correct time. Radio controlled clocks do exactly that. They are cheaper than the one ESP board, and run years on a single AA battery. No WiFi, tinkering, setup, or cables necessary
- qwertygnu 8mo agoGoogled "radio controlled clock" and seeing results from $20-$200, lots of inconsistency in what the product is.
- alnwlsn 8mo agoThese are usually marketed as "atomic time" or "atomic clock" here in the US.
- jcalvinowens 8mo agoIf you think this is overengineered, I built one that will really offend you: https://github.com/jcalvinowens/wallclock https://github.com/jcalvinowens/wallclock :) The point is to have fun and learn something, not really to solve a problem in a practical sense. The radio controlled clocks are extremely unreliable where I live.
- haunter 8mo agoThere are time signal stations all over the world, WWV is the most prominent US one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWV_(radio_station) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWV_(radio_station) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_clock#List_of_radio_time_signal_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_clock#List_of_radio_time...
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- gambiting 8mo agoThat is very cool. As for the problem of detecting the current position of hands - Casio solved in in watches with their Tough Movement mechanism, where there is a tiny tiny hole in the dial with a sensor behind it - the watch will check if the hands are over it when expected, and if not, automatically adjust - so even if a watch suffers a major impact that might move the hands, they will re-allign themselves. Such a clever and simple solution.
- js2 8mo agoThis is great. I spent years looking for an affordable battery-powered WiFi clock that syncs via NTP since where I am, the WWVB clocks never pick up the radio signal. I never considered making my own. Anyway, about two years ago this option popped up on Amazon. I've been happy with it: https://www.amazon.com/OCEST-Wall-Clock-12Inch-Auto/dp/B0DJS675X5 https://www.amazon.com/OCEST-Wall-Clock-12Inch-Auto/dp/B0DJS... I'm guessing internally it's not much different than the DIY clock in this submission.
- moduspol 8mo agoThanks for sharing this. I, too, have spent years trying to find an analog-style clock that is completely hands-off for adjustments (power outage, DST, drift correction) and it looks like this one handles it all. It feels like in 2026 this should be something default and assumable, but alas, it is not.
- accrual 8mo agoIt'd be interesting to see the logs or data on how the physical movement falls out of sync. It probably even correlates with temperature and humidity.
- retired 8mo agoI’m curious how long it takes for the hands to drift to the point where the time difference is perceivable. Luckily the 30 millisecond pulse time is configurable.
- montroser 8mo agoWhat I really want is one of these powered by gps. The time already comes for free in the signal, and from your location you can derive the time zone. That way DST is accounted for automatically, but you don't have to set up and rely on wifi. This would be truly zero-config and always correct.
- womod 8mo agoThere's quite a few clocks available that get their time over the air from the NIST WWVB radio station[0]. They usually have a little switch on the back if your area does/doesn't observe daylight savings. [0] - https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-distribution/radio-station-wwvb/help-wwvb-radio-controlled https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-di...
- IncreasePosts 8mo agoYou would still need some kind of configuration because the start of DST can change year to year, and this is not accounted for in the time signal from GPS
- montroser 8mo agoGood point that DST dates can technically change -- but in practice it doesn't really change on a year-to-year basis. The current law establishing the start and end dates in the US has been in effect unchanged for the last ~20 years.
- ssl-3 8mo agoGPS isn't too hard, either. The receivers are inexpensive ($5-$10 for the kind of accuracy that's useful here) and it's not hard to parse the NMEA strings and PPS they output into a spooky-accurate internal clock. It only takes a few connections and an antenna to integrate GPS into an MCU like an ESP (or an SBC like a Raspberry Pi or a whatever). Like, really: The hardware is ridiculously easy. The only difficult part is the code. But as we can see from this posting, the clock-driving bits are already written and are available for use. Just graft in the GPS parts instead of the NTP parts, add your DST/location rules if you really must (hint: that part is harder than it sounds), and send it. (And if the code still seems arduous, then remember: This is the kind of work that a reasonably-focused person who is armed with a decent bot can put together over a cup of coffee or two, even if they don't speak C. It may be popular here to poo-poo the bot here, but it's completely OK to get some help. Don't let pride get in the way of having fun, learning things, and building neat stuff. The tailor doesn't lament the invention of the cotton gin.)
- SoftTalker 8mo agoNow do a old fashioned mechanical pendulum clock. You'd probably need some kind of worm gear drive to move the pendulum bob up and down.
- cyberax 8mo agoI was looking at the way they did the position sync. And they didn't :( OK, here's how I'd do it: add small magnets at the bottom of the clock hands, and use the ESP's built-in Hall effect sensor to detect them. You can distinguish between hands using the magnetic field orientation.
- rballpug 8mo agoKeeping time in terms of hash-sigs that are in 64 bit architecture instance.
- timonoko 8mo agoOn that note: Converting €0 scrap into €400 video editing deck. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KlWYC6mzVkQ https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KlWYC6mzVkQ https://github.com/timonoko/Jogwheel https://github.com/timonoko/Jogwheel
- kfarr 8mo agoWhat a great idea. Legacy VCR controls upcycled for digital control! There's a lot of those old decks and LANC deck controllers lying around...
- timonoko 8mo agoThis is a hard problem. Solvable only with try and error. Those signals are just weird mess of coils, switches and resistors. ESP32 clock speed may also be a contributing factor.
- timonoko 8mo agoI asked Gemini to make sensible & readable version: https://github.com/timonoko/Jogwheel/blob/main/jogwheel_gem.py https://github.com/timonoko/Jogwheel/blob/main/jogwheel_gem.... But did not improve much, except variable names are now less esoteric.
- greenie_beans 8mo agolol i just bought this same clock cuz it was cheap and had no tech except the clock
- j45 8mo agoKeeping the clock analog was clutch.
- ChuckMcM 8mo agoPretty awesome. The only thing I would change is to put a USB battery between the usb wall power and the D1 mini. That way for power outages of < a couple of days or so you're clock will be fine.
- brokenmachine 8mo agoWhy bother? Just get NTP time when the power comes back. It's syncing every 15 minutes anyway.
- ChuckMcM 8mo agoBecause you want to know what time it is when the power is out?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- diimdeep 8mo agoI've tried similar project, as it turns out it is surprisingly hard to reliably move second's hand and not wobble in place, you need to drive quartz motor so precisely to make gears move. Post don't go into detail about schematic, but resistors and diodes around motor is to properly drive motor and protection from Inductive kickback (Flyback) https://www.microtype.io/blog/h-bridge-circuit-design https://www.microtype.io/blog/h-bridge-circuit-design
- staplung 8mo agoThis is cool but it seems like it would be liable to drift. I.e. it "knows" the correct time but doesn't have any way to figure out that it's been driving the movement fast or slow by some number of milliseconds. Eventually, that will pile up to the point that it's not any better than running the thing off of batteries. As the author points out, the cheap quartz mechanism has no way of reporting the position of the hands (other than the hands themselves) and that you have to set the PULSETIME constant by the right number of milliseconds. If you're off by even a millisecond, that's going to accumulate quick enough that it would make a difference over even a single day, wouldn't it? EDIT: as some have pointed out, the Lavet stepper theoretically accounts for this in that it steps exactly one tick after so many oscillations. That number of oscillations does not change so that's all you need to get right. However, that basically just kicks the can down the road a bit in that if each step is not exactly 1/60th of a circle or bits wear down or get sticky or you have analog noise in there you will presumably still have a source of biased drift that you won't be able to detect. But maybe those affects are small enough that they don't matter for a wall clock.
- bazodedo 8mo agoThe pulsetime is just to advance the clockwork one step, and is kept fixed, the advancement driven by the mechanism is discrete. As long as you keep track of the count, you wont accumulate drift. The adjustment is to get that stepping working, if it doesnt miss a step, youre good.
- mlhpdx 8mo agoIn a perfect world, yes. But mechanisms aren’t perfect and it’s entirely possible if not likely that steps will be missed as friction increases over time and things wear. I’m not saying these things matter much in this context. The clock will still be far more accurate than purely mechanical version. And, re-synchronizing it is as trivial as turning the knob, just as you would for the all mechanical mechanism.
- KaiserPro 8mo agoits a fairly reliably stepper motor system. You're right it will degrade over time, you'd be surprised how many steps it can do before it degrades.
- PlatoIsADisease 8mo agoI'm mostly interested in what goes wrong. I've made enough of these projects to know that ~75% need modifications that were not anticipated. For instance, I made a freezer temp sensor to php email for cases where the freezer stops working... but when I opened the freezer, it would send an email. I needed to sample for 30 minutes or something. Maybe this was simple and you will be part of the 25% that work perfect and need 0 updating.
- SoftTalker 8mo agoYes most things that monitor a sensor in the real world can't react to instantaneous readings. They need to use an average of samples over some time period. Also due to hysteresis, you have to allow time to see any changes in state in response to changes in inputs. Most real-world systems don't respond immediately.
- amelius 8mo agoWhat's the best way to periodically get time and date if your customers are big businesses with hostile IT departments?
- btbuildem 8mo agoGPS unit
- Neywiny 8mo agoA great solution I've used plenty of times is to query websites like google.com. I use it whenever my rtc on my Linux laptop gets reset (as long as it's still in my history. Otherwise I just set it manually). https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/400176 https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/400176
- kjs3 8mo agoMost 'big businesses' I've delt with have a time server someplace internal. It may be a stand alone NTP server, a network device like a Cisco router or a Windows AD server. You might ask the network team/Windows admin team nice and see what they have.
- greenail 8mo agoyou can buy dual coaxial shaft steppers ( X40 ) for car instrument panels open them and remove the hard stops. A very small magnet and 2 hall sensors gets you end stops.
- KaiserPro 8mo agoIf your budget is a bit more, and you want to hear a massive clunk every 30 seconds rather than a soft tick and you want to drive 2' (60cm) hands, then you might want this: https://waitingtrain.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-large-gents-turret-slave-movement.html https://waitingtrain.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-large-gents-turr... The smaller ones look the same but are less beefy. I used one to make this clock: https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/projects/electromechanical-clock/ https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/projects/electromechanical-c... Which instead of using a well disciplined time source, uses a tuning fork and 74xx logic to drive it
- smithza 8mo agoThe DIY tuning fork clock is very cool. I am hard pressed to understand why accutron doesn't still make and sell tuning-fork watches. I really admire the creative use of resonance frequencies (not dissimilar to quartz watches but cool that you can really see the tuning fork for you watch as opposed to a diminutive quartz crystal).
- dole 8mo agoThey recently re-released the Accutron with actual tuning fork movements, but at $6k ofc you’re better off buying vintage: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/introducing-accutron-314 https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/introducing-accutron-314
- KaiserPro 8mo agoThey have done a re-issue, which Dole has linked to (I'm not going to lie, they do look smashing) I think the reason why it took so long is a combination of snobbishness (its not "mechanical" enough) and cost of manufacture. I assume that most of the tooling has been lost, and it required a lot of work to re-learn how to make from scratch. But accutrons wern't that cheap when they launched, so I think they are within 50% of their original price, judging by my half arsed inflation calculations.
- teekert 8mo agoOn this topic. Do WiFi signals contain time (unencrypted)? If so why does my oven not pull time from the air and needs adjustment every 2 months? If not, why are APs not defacto time beacons for all sorts of non-smart appliances (and clocks)?
- cardiffspaceman 8mo agoI worked with CFG80211/MAC80211 on an old Linux kernel years ago. I don’t think time of day is in any packet.
- ianburrell 8mo agoI have thought that could use Matter for time sync. It works with both Wifi and Thread. I don't think there is a time message. I also don't know if it has public broadcast since Thread needs pairing to work. The advantage is that smart devices might have Matter support already. People with Matter devices will have border routers, which are perfect place for running NTP and broadcasting time.
- briHass 8mo agoThe gateway/router should be the time source. DHCP has an option to provide the time server (NTP) - option 42, and most decent devices or OSS/DIY router software (OpenWRT, opnSense) will support that as well as being the local time server.
- BenjiWiebe 8mo agoThat does require being connected to the AP though.
- ComputerGuru 8mo agoThe counterpoint to that is you aren't trusting any random wifi signal strong enough to reach your device to be telling the truth about the time!
- cbdevidal 8mo agoI’ve wanted to do this because there’s a zillion cool clocks out there that use a similar movement. I’d also wanted to make it battery powered which means doing NTP update only once per day (or less). Doubt that is realistic, tho. Maybe embed Hall sensors and detect when the hands are in a certain position and when all three line up wake the ESP32, do an NTP update, tick it forward to where it should be, then go to sleep. Probably still use too much power, especially the Halls.
- cweagans 8mo agoUse reed switches behind the clock face and magnets on the (presumably) different length hands instead of hall sensors. NTP sync once per day is more than adequate for household timekeeping - it might drift a few seconds here and there, but that’s fine for most people?
- cbdevidal 8mo agoYeah, reeds make more sense. I’d stagger them so that when the hour is at 12, minute at 3, second is at 6, all three reeds (wired in series) wake the microcontroller.
- tanvach 8mo agoRelated - we have an atomic Seiko wall clock expecting to have the time automatically adjusted by the WWVB LF atomic clock broadcast. Turns out, the signal is very weak where we now live. Manually setting the time on these atomic clocks is a HUGE pain (beware!). Turns out it's possible to emulate the atomic clock signal quite easily with a Raspberry Pi, or in my case I put together Arduino code that can emulate atomic clock broadcasts from around the world using an ESP32 module using NTP servers: https://github.com/tanvach/clocksync https://github.com/tanvach/clocksync The history of these atomic clock broadcast signals and their differences in different countries is quite fascinating.
- smithza 8mo agoI would be very careful of transmitting on the same frequency as WWVB. It is very likely illegal.
- meeb 8mo agoQuite possibly, however the range is stated in centimetres so practically it’s unlikely to be a concern.
- tanvach 8mo agoThat’s a very good point but the transmission power is extremely weak and won’t propagate more than 1m.
- wileydragonfly 8mo agoGet out
- RupertSalt 8mo agoYou do not have an atomic clock. Seiko does not manufacture “Atomic Clocks” for the $30 shelf in Target. You (and others here) don’t seem to know what an atomic clock is, or how it works, or what it costs! Your Seiko is a radio clock. It’s probably got a crystal or some other normal timekeeping gadget, and the external WWV signal is decoded to properly set it. “Atomic Clocks” are marketed to ignorant consumers who blithely use the term when the only external source is a radio station. The Stratum Zero clock may be atomic, but the caesium is not to be found on your nightstand. No caesium atoms would be found in your Seiko, bro.
- minneapoliced 8mo ago[flagged]
- delfugal 8mo agoWWVB Self Setting Analog clock on Amazon is $34.99. Dozens of styles. No DHCP to configure. It just works. But cool HN try.
- stevenjgarner 8mo ago$3.88 ? Walmart.com uses dynamically variable pricing that includes geographic and user variance - my price is $5.92 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mainstays-Basic-Indoor-8-78-Black-Analog-Round-Modern-Wall-Clock/761592027 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mainstays-Basic-Indoor-8-78-Black...
- BeeOnRope 8mo agoUser variance? Any evidence?
- stevenjgarner 8mo agoWhile Walmart has historically denied using "individualized" pricing (charging two people different prices for the exact same item based on their income), they do use behavioral targeting [1] Members of Walmart+ often see different "final" prices due to exclusive discounts, rewards (Walmart Rewards), or waived shipping/delivery fees that aren't available to guest users. Walmart uses AI to offer personalized promotions. You might see a "Rollback" or a "Just for You" offer on an item you’ve viewed multiple times or purchased previously, effectively changing the price for you specifically via a targeted discount. Like many e-commerce giants, Walmart may also offer "first-time app user" discounts or "win-back" coupons to specific customer segments. [1] https://goaura.com/blog/walmart-pricing-strategies https://goaura.com/blog/walmart-pricing-strategies
- jojobas 8mo agoAn HN mention is surely grounds for a whopping $2.04 hike.
- gruez 8mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation Git history shows it was published more than 2 years ago.
- ghm2199 8mo agoOne thing with stepper motor h bridges is that you need to account for back current that might at the least cause spikes leading to misfires or worst frying your microcontroller. The ideal way to protect is is using opto electric transistors to drive the motor with a gate voltage connected to the microcontroller and isolated power supply for the motor.
- tonymet 8mo agoI'm sure there's huge demand for remote time sync . many buildings have dozens of these that need setting during daylight saving time change.
- nofunsir 8mo agoThis will pair nicely with the eps8266 i just flashed after ripping it out of a Wyze plug that required I download their app, updating my operating system first of course, make an account and agree to their privacy policy.
- ezconnect 8mo agoSo basically we just need a 1pps from a GPS chip to make the analog clocks accurate and use that to drive the motor. We set it once and it will be accurate for a long time.
- VladVladikoff 8mo agoI don’t understand why it needs to neurotically check so frequently? 30 times a second seems like a lot of hammering on the NTP server. Am I missing something here? Some physical reason why that is necessary perhaps?
- bArray 8mo ago> The ESP8266 reconnects to the NTP server every 15 minutes which keeps the clock accurate. It doesn't seem to be hammering the NTP server 30 times a second.
- VladVladikoff 8mo agoAh ok, I guess I misunderstood this part: >Ten times each second the ESP8266 compares the time displayed on the analog clock to the actual time retrieved from an NTP server. Not sure where I got 30 from. Dyslexia between reading and commenting.
- bArray 8mo agoNo worries. You would be right to be concerned about an NTP server being polled so regularly.
- dorongrinstein 8mo agoawesome project
- ComputerGuru 8mo agoThis is more resourceful than what I once did, which was set up an atomic clock "repeater" to get analog atomic clocks (one in each room) in a site to actually receive the signal in a 1930s structure made of solid brick and concrete blocks. Except it wasn't a repeater so much as it was a MITM fake, with an rpi connected to an sdr-like system to generate a fake WWVB (iirc?) based off an NTP clock. Legality was technically questionable, but since the signal didn't really leave the site perimeter (or even the building, really), I think it was ok.