[time-nuts] Re: local WWVB ?

[Erik E. Fair]

There are software "emulators" for WWVB, JJY, MSF, DCF77 available for both iPhones and Android phones that transmit very low power time signals through the mobile phone speakers as a harmonic.

See

	https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.houryo.wwvbemulator&hl=en_US

	https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clock-wave/id1073576068

I've used Clock Wave myself to set a WWVB wall clock in a poor-reception part of my house.

These emulators are also popular for people who buy/own so-called "atomic" (or "radio controlled") quartz watches (e.g., Casio Multiband/WaveCeptor, Citizen, some models of Seiko) that can synchronize to one or more of these time signals, but who live out of reception range of the transmitters (e.g., South America, Africa, Australia, India).

I discovered this class of software for mobile phones while researching acquistion or building of a WWVB passive repeater to get that signal into those parts of my house that are too well shielded by the building materials. I never did find one to buy, and building one seemed less interesting once I discovered the software emulators.

To further publicize their existence for people who want accurate time on their wrist watches but won't/can't spring for a GPS watch (those tend to start at $1k and go up), I wrote some articles for Quora, e.g.,

https://www.quora.com/Does-that-Atomic-Time-keeping-feature-in-Casio-G-Shock-watches-work-in-India/answer/Erik-Fair

These types of watches are popular in Japan, but, alas, there are many attractive models which are not "multiband" (to use Casio's marketing phrase for the capability) - they only receive the JJY stations/frequencies in Japan - thus, a watch enthusiast who wants to fully use one of those Japan Domestic Models (JDM) outside Japan can now use a software emulator to set their watches.

Kinda cool that a mobile phone speaker can harmonically transmit 60 KHz.

	Erik