Gadgetboy gets a new alarm clock.

Posted by Les on Sunday, July 13, 2003 at 10:46 AM. Read 719 times. Tags:
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We’ve been living with a mildly dysfunctional alarm clock for the last couple of years. It’s this General Electric combo phone/caller ID/dual alarm clock that works OK most of the time. The problem lies in the fact that it sometimes forgets to keep track of time. Like most clocks you press buttons to set the alarms, turn the alarms on and off, scroll through the caller ID list and delete the caller ID list. Press a button to turn an alarm on or check who called and the display will change to show the relevant information and after a couple of moments it’s supposed to revert back to the current time.  Sometimes it forgets to revert back and is stuck on whatever the last display was and that causes time to slow down, for the clock anyway. I’ve been late to work more than once because the alarm didn’t go off because the clock had lost 4 hours due to being stuck displaying some past bit of info. It’s been an annoyance for a couple of years now.

So I broke down and bought a new dual alarm clock yesterday while wandering the aisles of Walmart. I stumbled across the Emerson CKS2237 Dual Alarm Clock Radio and it was cool enough that I bought one on the spot. The coolest part of this alarm clock is the fact that it sets itself. Plug it in and the display immediately changes to the current time, date and day. It automatically changes for daylight savings time too. Plus the LED display is huge making it easy to see from across the room and it has the option to wake you via radio or buzzer. It’s a cool clock and I can use it to keep the other clocks in the house set to the correct time.

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Monkeyspit United States Posted on 07/13/2003 at 11:49 AM

Monkeyspit pic

My GE is still alive and kicking, even though it melted a bit.

leigh United States Posted on 07/14/2003 at 04:13 AM

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So, what you’re saying is that this new clock will be Boss Clock, right?  Keeping all the other clocks in the house in line?  Cool.  I need one of those. wink

Les United States Posted on 07/14/2003 at 06:08 AM

Les pic

Yeah, that’s a pretty good summary. I was using my PC for that as Windows XP syncs every time you connect to the net, but now I don’t have to turn on my PC to know I have the correct time.

I’ve noticed more and more clocks that are self-setting these days. These clocks make use of the NIST Radio Station WWVB service to synchronize with the national atomic clock.

WWVB continuously broadcasts time and frequency signals at 60 kHz. The carrier frequency provides a stable frequency reference traceable to the national standard. There are no voice announcements on the station, but a time code is synchronized with the 60 kHz carrier and is broadcast continuously at a rate of 1 bit per second using pulse width modulation. The carrier power is reduced and restored to produce the time code bits. The carrier power is reduced 10 dB at the start of each second, so that the leading edge of every negative going pulse is on time. Full power is restored 0.2 s later for a binary “0”, 0.5 s later for a binary “1”, or 0.8 s later to convey a position marker. The binary coded decimal (BCD) format is used so that binary digits are combined to represent decimal numbers.

The time code contains the year, day of year, hour, minute, second, and flags that indicate the status of Daylight Saving Time, leap years, and leap seconds. For more details, view the WWVB time code format.

The first clocks with this function built-in were rather expensive, but the prices on them have been steadily falling for awhile now so that you can find them for an average of around $25 or so. This was the first dual alarm clock I’d found with it so I snapped it up (though it’s not the first model Erickson made with this feature). I discovered one other cool thing about this clock last night. When you set the alarm you can program it go off every day, only on weekdays or only on weekends. So if you need one alarm during the week and a different one on the weekend you can set it up that way. Nifty!

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All I know is the wine lasts longer when you don’t gotta share it with someone
All I know is my steak tastes better when I take my steak tastes better pill
-- I Feel Fantastic, Jonathan Coulton

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