The signal strength in the upper right shows you have reception to the radio signal that broadcasts the current time.

probably saved you a lot of daylight by now!

If that is a clock that syncs with NIST, daylight saving time is part of the signal. This is how it knows even though DST changed under Bush.

Well, in the US it's been second Sunday of March - first Sunday of November since 1966 so a calendar-clock can determine it easily. Though this one is radio-controlled I think, so it will still work even if that changes.

Well, are you a businessman now or what?

I had a clock that synced with NIST or some other org which was really freaking cool.... until the sync broke and was always 10 minutes off. Set it manually and about an hour or 2 later it was back to being 10 minutes off.

Was a bit sad when I got rid of it

I have the version of this with the sensor you mount somewhere outside. It can then display both indoor and outdoor temperature.

It's changed a few times since 1966, and it varies a bit in a few states/territories of the US. It was the last Sunday in April and last Sunday in October back then. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States

My water plant got a bunch of these when it open in 1995. They are still up and running.

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And the back has a switch for the time zone.

What a strange bug.

Yup. I'm guessing that there was a slight low/high voltage issue somewhere in there that was skewing it, but I wasn't going to tear it apart, figure out what component needed to be repaired/replaced, repair/replace said component, and hope that it fixed it. It would have taken hours and by that point my phone was a more reliable alarm so I got rid of it.

I have 4 of those same clocks around the house.

If anyone wants to nerd out a bit, this is the radio station it’s listening to:

https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-distribution/radio-station-wwvb

I've changed the batteries maybe twice in my life, things a beast

Same here.

Ahhh interesting, learned something new today thank you

I have a small round digital clock I got for Christmas at age 10, still have it at 25 so far, never giving it up until it dies haha.

Meanwhile my Honda GPS navigation on my 08 si can't even get the time right.

Show your appreciation by giving it a clean.

And you can install an android app that emulates the signal with your phone speaker. Most modern phone CPUs have high enough quality sound that it can make the signal clean enough to update devices that otherwise can't receive the signal.

I have the same clock! It’s sick

My jam

You should have asked for cocaine as well. Everybody knows businessmen love that stuff.

WWVB gang unite!

And the station WWV (no B on the end) broadcasts the signal on several high frequency bandwidths. If you have a shortwave radio you can listen to those.

How I've set my watches since the late 80's.

https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-distribution/radio-station-wwv

2000s designs were pretty bad

Then we can chalk it up to the radio control. That signal has a DST bit.

My A/C brings in hella dust lmfao

I will give it another wipe down though

No it’s only been this way since 2007

My watch is connected to this too I think.

What's the thing on the upper left under the PM?

I have this with my Sony Dream Machine. Has the old iPod docking station in it. It always runs 25 minutes fast, but it never fails me!!

It shows a "P" when it's pm

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Above the "P" is America

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I wish my newer (maybe 10 years old) was this smart. Awhile back when the timing of the change was updated it kept on switching on the same old schedule

It's a beast

My guess is pacific time zone.

How do you know

Ok that’s really cool.

Gave this an upvote for lasting longer than anyone would expect. That's a worthy goal.

Then almost took the upvote away when I saw the username. Dude! EWWWWW! Gross! (of course, that's probably his point.)

I had this clock

Thanks for the edifying and informative post, u/VapeMySemen! It's a very cool gadget.

Do you have allergies at home? I just bought a hepa air purifier because my old dusty house causes me all sorts of sinus issues.

No the P is pacific time. The america shows Pacific time zone

This mans username. My lord

There’s also a number you can dial to get the time. I use it to make test calls to verify phones are working at work. (202)762-1401

shit man I got the same clock lmao

My clock does this! It’s always 10min 22sec off.

I have the Sony dream machine that is going strong

Thats awesome

Well u/vapemysemen ?????

So why not set it 10min off to begin with to cancel it out

That is so weird, I have that number saved in my phone, and I decided to call it tonight and the computer is not picking up and saying “on the beep, the time is————-“

I’ve noticed recently it’s been ringing for about 20 seconds and then answers.

HUH. It just worked after you posted and I called it back.

“US Naval Observatory master clock, at the tone, Eastern Standard time, 22 hours 29 minutes 30 seconds”

Just called from one of my phones. Rang forever. Called from the other and it answered immediately. Seems it has a mind of its own.

“22 hours 32 minutes exactly.”

Welp, it seems to be working just fine. It must have a small queue of phone calls coming in.

There aren't that many time signals in the US. Also, it's in the clock's instructions

Was going to say it has to be hitting a radio or something.Daylight saving days changed something like 15 years ago.

And that signal itself has DST bits encoded so whenever DST moves around these can stay current. You can even get watches that can do WWVB. So cool!

Thank you

I’m not gonna say you were a cool kid, but it sounds like you were a bright one

Completely agree! I have the same thing and I honestly can't even remember when I last changed the batteries.

Electronics from the 2000s were built like tanks. Every piece of 00’s tech I have still works flawlessly.

r/CumCarts

I have one too! Thing is the perfect clock

Did it help you be a businessman?

Mine is off 10 minutes too! Out of curiosity, do you remember if yours was slow or fast? Mine was fast, I was early to so much shit before I figured it out

Mine does this as well, is yours slow or fast? Mine is fast, which is at least better than being slow

It varies. DST it’s slow. When it’s not DST its fast. Always by the same amount of time.

Had the same one in college. Don't know what happened to it

So it uses the speaker to create sound waves that emulate electromagnetic waves..... I am a bit doubtful

Edit: i ran the app for an atomic watch that i cannot sync where I am, and it worked.

Oh that’s neat. I wonder if you can sabotage public clocks with that 😀

How's the coverage of WWVB these days with so many switching power supplies? Do these clock work well say from Maine to Florida to Hawaii?

We've tuned the 60KHz signal here in Brazil at night, but we had to use an 300 meter antenna in a rural location (:

That’s odd since GPS relies on very accurate timing. But maybe it doesn’t know DST, I’d assume it only really needs a universal time that isn’t jittering.

Reality is cyclical, that’s why

I always use time.gov myself

I love this clock

I got the meat, but no potatoes

Let us know if it changes next year. The true test

ty for saying saving and not savings.

I'm an electrical engineer and i can't believe this works.. Wild

Lone Star?

Woah. Still using the same clock.

Man you know whats so cool is ive been learning to produce edm music and been learning a lot about how the synths work and it uses the same terminology like pulse width modulation and such but relating to soundwaves.

Kinda cool how sin wave terminology can apply to so many different things

How do you like that hover ball, same one as the YouTube ads?

The US. The shaded in part is the Pacific time zone.

Or, that's my best guess.

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You just blew OP's mind.

Why would it say PM at the top and then P below it? Pretty sure the P is for Pacific (the time zone that's shown on the map)

Raspberry

You can say it lives up to its name

next year if it doesn’t change during fall back i’ll be impressed

Mine is older than me (39). Still works.

I have a clock radio from the 70s. It is ugly, but I think it may outlive me!

This is the most detailed government webpage I've ever seen, and I appreciate that even as someone who doesn't understand radio signals all that well

This is hilarious. I have the exact same alarm clock that my mother also got me when I was a child and it is still kicking it. Love that thing, it’s survived multiple moves and falls.

Seems to be an earlier version of this clock:

• 7-inch Atomic Alarm Clock with Date, Day of Week and Temperature- Clocks | AcuRite Weather

The clock in the OP seems to be a Model 13131A2, which has its manual linked on the Manuals tab ("Legacy Product 13131A2").

I tried it and just heard a voice whispering "SEVEN DAYS". Is that bad....?

It's not the sound waves nor speaker that matters here, but what powers the diaphragm of that speaker. The speaker's very small electric coil puts out EM waves at a harmonic frequency the device picks up. Pretty neat trick.

Building just a wire loop greatly improves the signal without any audio. http://www.jrcomputing.com.au/Set_Watch/Set_Watch_Manual.html

Wait until you hear…that modern speakers can transmit in more than just the mechanical wave spectrum…

If it’s like a decade old, possible it’s just a simple capacitor. They tend to bulge and/or leak when they go bad so easy to spot. They are cheap and pretty simple to replace with a cheap $10 soldering iron.

A lot of TVs have this problem as well. Pretty much the whole TV is still good. Just a $1 capacitor on the power supply board blew.

I LOVE THIS. Buyitforlife for sure. I get so pissed off at apple and ms and tesla etc.

This 100% reads like one of those "charge your phone in the microwave" pranks. Of course it's not, but it does come across just as ridiculous if you don't understand the science behind it. Suddenly it seems not that crazy people would fall for hoaxes like that.

I think you meant to reply to another comment

Did you get a trenchcoat for you and your two brothers?

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If nist.gov would ever shut down for a day, the country would probably collapse

Now that's a r/unexpectedSpaceballs worthy thread

That map is some /r/shittymapporn lol

"Mom, can we get cocaine?"

'No, we already have cocaine at home.'

I have one of these, 6 years and only changed the battery’s twice

Because it’s an atomic clock….

> wrist watches

To be fair, wrist watches are now a days more jewelry than time keeping devices.

Seems to be pretty acu rite

Thank you!!

I have one of these clocks but it has lost the ability to receive a signal. One of those things where it's useless but you hate to throw it out in case there's a fix. And there is!

Only one man would dare give me the raspberry.

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>To be fair, wrist watches are now a days more computer than time keeping devices.

FTFY

I have a watch that connects to this. Casio wave ceptor.

I didn’t know this existed. We used to have a local version of it, but the telephone company ended that years ago.

I want to say fast, but might have been slow. It’s been a number of years.

Wanted to be a man at 7, grew up to have a Reddit username - vapemysemen

And yet my car designed in 2016 can't get it's shit together

You will find out in a week, I guess. Might be best to avoid any old wells in the meantime.

I would expect that if it is showing the right time at all, then it would of course be showing the correct daylight savings time. It’s not like it’s gonna work for everything but daylight savings. Radio-signal clocks don’t work that way.

This must be right. I certainly didn't recognize that shape as the US. Thank you.

I had that same clock, every day it would reset to the wrong time zone no matter how many times I set it.

Thank you! That's one shitty map though. :)

Is this popcorn you are speaking of ??

You can spell out P.O.P.C.O.R.N on any handset I remember regardless of area code and you get the time

I’ve never heard of the popcorn thing before. I have no idea.

I'm not even fucking with you this was a huge deal .. it was hella fun... What time is it .. then we would sneak to a phone and call popcorn ... The current time is ... Lol memories

Well shoot, it was shut down in 2007. That’s sad as heck.

It's funny what does and doesn't last. In 2022 "twenty years ago" isn't what it used to be, but it's also not what it used to be before that.

Lucky that the paint didn't oxidize or start some weird off gassing, the LCD didn't crack, or the wire to the power adapter didn't snap, but by 2002, we knew how to keep clocks synched. If you still use the same refrigerator over that same span of time, lucky you, but I bet the one that's been abandoned at the old house where some of my family used to live, installed in 1940-or-50-something would still run perfectly, if the electric were on, right up until it needs to be manually defrosted.

I wouldn't bet much, though, it really has been a long time since I saw it running and thought "how is this so old?"

r/rimjob_steve

Is it an analog or digital clock? For the analog ones, there is a synchronization procedure so it can “learn” the positions of the hands (it doesn’t know where they are; it learns them once then remembers how far it’s moved them). This needs to be repeated periodically, such as when changing batteries.

My Mainstays (Walmart) brand wall clock I got for Christmas 2012 works the same way. It sets itself and knows when daylight savings time is. However, the calendar only goes to the end of 2036, for some stupid reason.

My 85 year old mother had the same clock. No idea how long she’s had it, but it seems forever.

Or it got the reddit hug

God this reminds me...

My father has a clock that he got from italy. I ve spent hours at some point researching why it was always one hour behind, even if you set it right. Well, it had a signal strength indicator which I finally found out it connected to the radio signal and always sync-ed with italian local time... just disabled it lol

No where in the picture do I see that. I googled the clock brand and looked at the model pictures for a minute, then I looked at that model's information/instructions.

Also again, there are not that many time signals in the US; if there is a clock updating from a radio signal in the US, it's probably the WWV.

And to be thorough, I say US because the clock shows a continental US outline.

It's very Acurite!

I live pretty close to those, they’re really beautiful at night blinking red on the horizon

But I do all my best meditating in there!!

i remember when "atomic" clocks were popular

It has its own y2k bug cause they cheaped out on software it happened this year. With 200x-2011 navigation. It would otherwise know dst and date, but know is stuck without dst or correct date. However they fixed it enough where is off only by the hour.

Do you even grammar?

Saving not Savings.

Okay that's actually sick.

We used to build things to work.

It’s digital, it’s only a few years old too, 5 at the most. It’s one of those ones with multiple functions, but everything else seems to work fine.

I’ve got one just like it, used to be my grandma’s

The manual for the clock is here:

• https://www.acurite.com/media/manuals/13131a2.pdf

This is at the top of Page 2 of the Manual:

• https://i.imgur.com/3KniWDY.png

This is such a mind trip. I watched a recommended YouTube video at like 2 am last night about NIST. It was the first time I’ve ever heard of it and had no idea it existed. Was interesting af and now I open reddit today and the first thread has this as the top comment. Insane….feels like The Truman Show

I think POPCORN stopped being a thing like 15 years ago.

Edit: lucky guess. It shut down 2007

https://www.kqed.org/news/11853891/you-used-to-be-able-to-call-pop-corn-and-get-the-time-what-happened-to-that

And, in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

I think this might be an iOS version

Nice name

there's a classic Terence Hill & Bud Spencer movie where the villain has a bomb that will... delete all numbers. like, the existence of numbers. to which they reply things like "it'll be impossible to figure out what's happening during a football game!" "it'll be impossible to order pizza delivery!" .

now I'm picturing a hacker deciding to destroy the world by... messing with the satellite radios that sync people's alarm clocks, on the day of the daylight savings change.

There was a number like that growing up, I could dial WEATHER for the weather and 777-4647 for the time, it would say "Calling long distance? Make a list of what you want to talk about, you'll save more in less time. The time is..." Still remember that shit....

That would’ve been a locally controlled device in a phone central office near you. Ours was 774-9998 and the one at my grandparents house was 764-0105 I think. Both had different advertisement messages but the timekeepers voice was identical.

why bare the day and month the wrong way round?

That’s NIST for you check out their e-commerce store.

How do you sleep when it's 79F in your bedroom?

OP speaks the truth! Mine lasted 13 years and only broke because of movers.

I have a travel alarm clock that’s older than me (I’m 27) and it does the same thing!