[time-nuts] On Setting Precision Clock
David Forbes
dforbes at dakotacom.net
Sat Jul 22 16:42:16 UTC 2006
At 7:18 PM -0700 7/21/06, Brooke Clarke wrote:
>Hi David:
>
>Yes, I like it.
>
>Should Increment and Decrement work on the whole counter? for example
>when changing minutes you can only increment or decrement the minutes
>digit and the 10 minute digit follows?
>
>Thanks & Have Fun,
>
>Brooke
Brooke,
I find that the most annoying thing in the world* is a clock that
requires you to cycle through 59 of the wrong minutes to get to the
minute you want. So I designed my clocks to use one digit at a time
setting on the minutes and seconds, but to cycle through all 12 hours
in one go. For 24 hour mode, you might like having one digit set at a
timem.
Ideally, you'd set the timezone and let GPS set the clock via NMEA
strings. Timezone can be difficult to calculate given the lat/long
info - having the user set it as a number of hourse like -7 or +6
relative to The Center Of The Known Universe (Greenwich) is easier.
Since DST is also quite difficult to calculate, many in the world of
exotic electronic clock makers just provide a DST on/off flag for you
to set manually twice a year. I don't have DST here in Arizona, so I
don't think about it much.
* Recently I encountered a clock that was even more annoying. It was
a Seventies digital clock of the mechanical wheel type on an electric
cooking range. The timesetting knob was key-shaped so you could only
turn it a half-turn at a time, which incremented the clock by all of
three minutes. Think how many turns it took to move it 6 hours!
--
--David Forbes, Tucson, AZ
http://www.cathodecorner.com/
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