[time-nuts] can of worms: time-of-day in a community radio station

[jimlux]

On 10/18/19 12:20 PM, Eric Scace wrote:
>     I fear that I am developing a reputation for bringing to the list rather oddball questions. In my rôle as agent provocateur, therefore, here is another such problem.
> 
>     Questions for you are at the end. Thanks for your thoughts,.
> 
> — Eric
> 


I think that one aspect is more the "display" than the 
mechanism/implementation behind it.  Digital displays are terrible for 
this, you really want an analog display with the sweep second hand.

If you're reading copy to prep, and waiting for the cue, it's hard to 
switch between reading copy and read digital display - the analog second 
hand is a great indication of "how long til I'm live"


So, one thing that you might want to do is figure out an inexpensive, 
easily duplicated, not depending on surplus, way to get that "analog 
wall clock".

It seems that you should be able to get a LCD display (doesn't have to 
be high res), hook it up to a RPi or something commodity, and find 
software that displays a round wall clock, and syncs to NTP.


If you can find software that integrates cue-ing with the wall clock so 
much the better - all the radio stations I've ever been at run their 
operations on a fairly repetitive schedule -for instance, PBS stations 
do  station ID at the top, national news, local news, then network feed, 
with well defined outserts and inserts.

Back in the day (i.e. more than 20 years ago) I saw an analog clock that 
had LEDs around the dial that showed the *minute* when the various cues 
were, and the "next cue" would blink.  It was up to the talent and the 
engineer to hit the mark with respect to the second hand crossing 12.