http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43321113 makes it sound as if it's a
big problem that affects significant numbers of alarm clocks, central
heating timers and oven clocks.

Is that really that case? I would have thought it would only affect
mechanical clocks with synchronous motors, and that all electronic clocks
would use a built-in quartz crystal as their time reference. Are there many
mechanical clocks and central heating timers still in use? Or are there any
electronic clocks/timers that sync to the mains rather than their own quartz
crystal? Is it as important as it used to be for the mains frequency to be
kept within such very tight tolerances and to average out at 50 Hz over any
24-hour period so there is no nett loss or gain?

My parents have one mains clock with a synchronous motor, but all their
other clocks, and all of our clocks, are mains or battery-powered electronic
(ie digital or else analogue-by-stepper-motor).

On 09/03/2018 18:58, NY wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43321113 makes it sound as if
it's a big problem that affects significant numbers of alarm clocks,
central heating timers and oven clocks.

Is that really that case? I would have thought it would only affect
mechanical clocks with synchronous motors, and that all electronic
clocks would use a built-in quartz crystal as their time reference. Are
there many mechanical clocks and central heating timers still in use? Or
are there any electronic clocks/timers that sync to the mains rather
than their own quartz crystal? Is it as important as it used to be for
the mains frequency to be kept within such very tight tolerances and to
average out at 50 Hz over any 24-hour period so there is no nett loss or
gain?

My parents have one mains clock with a synchronous motor, but all their
other clocks, and all of our clocks, are mains or battery-powered
electronic (ie digital or else analogue-by-stepper-motor).

"So yes, you can manually adjust your clocks - but they will
automatically stop losing time once the grid stabilises."

Or will they attempt to correct them by increasing the frequency? In
which case resetting them will result in them being fast.

--
Max Demian

NY formulated the question :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43321113 makes it sound as if it's a
big problem that affects significant numbers of alarm clocks, central heating
timers and oven clocks.

Is that really that case? I would have thought it would only affect
mechanical clocks with synchronous motors, and that all electronic clocks
would use a built-in quartz crystal as their time reference. Are there many
mechanical clocks and central heating timers still in use? Or are there any
electronic clocks/timers that sync to the mains rather than their own quartz
crystal? Is it as important as it used to be for the mains frequency to be
kept within such very tight tolerances and to average out at 50 Hz over any
24-hour period so there is no nett loss or gain?

My parents have one mains clock with a synchronous motor, but all their other
clocks, and all of our clocks, are mains or battery-powered electronic (ie
digital or else analogue-by-stepper-motor).

I have one mains synchronous clock, which is a solar clock turning the
drive lights on and off. I keep intending to replace it, but it works
fine and does need to be that precise. The rest are radio controlled
clocks, using Anthorn.

Crystal controlled clocks, like my laptops and desktops are much more
variable, but they sync to internet time once per day. Sat receiver has
a crystal controlled clock, but syncs to the satellite every time it is
turned on for a couple of minutes. Likewise landline phones and mobile
phones.

"Harry Bloomfield" wrote in message
news
NY formulated the question :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43321113 makes it sound as if it's
a big problem that affects significant numbers of alarm clocks, central
heating timers and oven clocks.

Is that really that case? I would have thought it would only affect
mechanical clocks with synchronous motors, and that all electronic clocks
would use a built-in quartz crystal as their time reference. Are there
many mechanical clocks and central heating timers still in use? Or are
there any electronic clocks/timers that sync to the mains rather than
their own quartz crystal? Is it as important as it used to be for the
mains frequency to be kept within such very tight tolerances and to
average out at 50 Hz over any 24-hour period so there is no nett loss or
gain?

My parents have one mains clock with a synchronous motor, but all their
other clocks, and all of our clocks, are mains or battery-powered
electronic (ie digital or else analogue-by-stepper-motor).

I have one mains synchronous clock, which is a solar clock turning the
drive lights on and off. I keep intending to replace it, but it works fine
and does need to be that precise. The rest are radio controlled clocks,
using Anthorn.

Crystal controlled clocks, like my laptops and desktops are much more
variable, but they sync to internet time once per day. Sat receiver has a
crystal controlled clock, but syncs to the satellite every time it is
turned on for a couple of minutes. Likewise landline phones and mobile
phones.

So true mains-sync clocks (as opposed to free-running or else periodically
syncing to a master clock) sound to be fairly rare, as mechanical ones with
a synchronous motor are gradually replaced with crystal-controlled ones. I
wonder how many people have actually been affected by it, if most clocks are
free running (but accurate) or periodically synced rather than mains-synced.

Oh, and I think Windows PCs sync once a week rather than once a day. I'm not
sure how often Mac and Linux sync their clocks to a time source. The maximum
that my PC seems to get adrift is about two minutes per week, and I'm
surprised it's even as much as that - evidently quality control on crystals
isn't as good as it should be.

The only clock which keeps really poor time (consistently loses time) is the
digital one on the cooker. If it was mains-synced, I'd expect that it would
be correct averaged over a long period of time, even if it lost a bit of
time during heavy usage periods during the day and gained a corresponding
amount overnight. So it may have a very out-of-spec crystal...

It happens that NY formulated :
Oh, and I think Windows PCs sync once a week rather than once a day. I'm not
sure how often Mac and Linux sync their clocks to a time source. The maximum
that my PC seems to get adrift is about two minutes per week, and I'm
surprised it's even as much as that - evidently quality control on crystals
isn't as good as it should be.

No - mine are configured to sync once per day, via a reg hack.

"Harry Bloomfield" wrote in message
news
It happens that NY formulated :
Oh, and I think Windows PCs sync once a week rather than once a day. I'm
not sure how often Mac and Linux sync their clocks to a time source. The
maximum that my PC seems to get adrift is about two minutes per week, and
I'm surprised it's even as much as that - evidently quality control on
crystals isn't as good as it should be.

No - mine are configured to sync once per day, via a reg hack.

Ah, OK. I'll have to look up that hack to reduce the chance of clock skew
between different PCs on the network.
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/change...terval-windows
seems to describe what to do with SpecialPollInterval. I've always been
surprised that the ability to alter that interval isn't provided on the
Internet Time tab of the clock.

"NY" wrote in message
o.uk...
"Harry Bloomfield" wrote in message
news
It happens that NY formulated :
Oh, and I think Windows PCs sync once a week rather than once a day. I'm
not sure how often Mac and Linux sync their clocks to a time source. The
maximum that my PC seems to get adrift is about two minutes per week,
and I'm surprised it's even as much as that - evidently quality control
on crystals isn't as good as it should be.

No - mine are configured to sync once per day, via a reg hack.

Ah, OK. I'll have to look up that hack to reduce the chance of clock skew
between different PCs on the network.
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/change...terval-windows
seems to describe what to do with SpecialPollInterval. I've always been
surprised that the ability to alter that interval isn't provided on the
Internet Time tab of the clock.

Yes that works perfectly:

Change

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet\Services
\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient\SpecialPollInterv al

from its default value of 604800 (0x093A80) [1 week]

to 86400 (0x015180) [1 day]

I'm not sure whether you need to restart the "Windows Time" service for it
to take effect, but I did to be on the safe side.

I proved that it worked by temporarily setting the value to 60, and then
deliberately setting the time manually to a few minutes fast or slow. Within
a minute the clock changed automatically as it reesynced. Having set it back
to 1 day, I can see in the clock's Internet Time tab it says "Next sync
10/03/2018 at 21:21. Last successfully synced on 09/03/2018 at 21:23" - in
other words it wants to sync 1 day later than it last did.

On 09/03/18 20:35, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
It happens that NY formulated :
Oh, and I think Windows PCs sync once a week rather than once a day.
I'm not sure how often Mac and Linux sync their clocks to a time
source. The maximum that my PC seems to get adrift is about two
minutes per week, and I'm surprised it's even as much as that -
evidently quality control on crystals isn't as good as it should be.

No - mine are configured to sync once per day, via a reg hack.
Linux and probably Mac synchronise very very frequently

"These options specify the minimum and maximum poll intervals for NTP
messages, in seconds as a power of two. The maximum poll
interval defaults to 10 (1,024 s), but can be increased by the
maxpoll option to an upper limit of 17 (36.4 h). The minimum
poll interval defaults to 6 (64 s), but can be decreased by the
minpoll option to a lower limit of 4 (16 s). These option are
valid only with the server and peer commands."


--
"A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight
and understanding".

Marshall McLuhan

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 09/03/18 20:35, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
It happens that NY formulated :
Oh, and I think Windows PCs sync once a week rather than once a day.
I'm not sure how often Mac and Linux sync their clocks to a time
source. The maximum that my PC seems to get adrift is about two
minutes per week, and I'm surprised it's even as much as that -
evidently quality control on crystals isn't as good as it should be.

No - mine are configured to sync once per day, via a reg hack.
Linux and probably Mac synchronise very very frequently

"These options specify the minimum and maximum poll intervals for NTP
messages, in seconds as a power of two. The maximum poll
interval defaults to 10 (1,024 s), but can be increased by the
maxpoll option to an upper limit of 17 (36.4 h). The minimum
poll interval defaults to 6 (64 s), but can be decreased by the
minpoll option to a lower limit of 4 (16 s). These option are
valid only with the server and peer commands."

I imagine Microsoft felt a certain obligation to protect public NTP
servers from overload. The proper way to do it if you have more than
one or two computers is to have a local NTP server which only contacts
the higher tier servers when it needs to (algorithmically) and sync all
the local computers as often as you desire to the local server.

Linux is still a sufficiently minor part of the installed base of
non-networked computers to be able to afford to be less public spirited,
but people should still be encouraged not to generate totally
unnecessary traffic.


--

Roger Hayter

On 09/03/2018 20:26, NY wrote:


So true mains-sync clocks (as opposed to free-running or else
periodically syncing to a master clock) sound to be fairly rare, as
mechanical ones with a synchronous motor are gradually replaced with
crystal-controlled ones. I wonder how many people have actually been
affected by it, if most clocks are free running (but accurate) or
periodically synced rather than mains-synced.


I have a number of mains powered clocks with LED and LCD displays. I
would expect them to rely on mains frequency. My Casio watch uses a
crystal but does gain about a second a day.


--
Michael Chare

"Michael Chare" wrote in message
news
On 09/03/2018 20:26, NY wrote:


So true mains-sync clocks (as opposed to free-running or else
periodically syncing to a master clock) sound to be fairly rare, as
mechanical ones with a synchronous motor are gradually replaced with
crystal-controlled ones. I wonder how many people have actually been
affected by it, if most clocks are free running (but accurate) or
periodically synced rather than mains-synced.


I have a number of mains powered clocks with LED and LCD displays. I would
expect them to rely on mains frequency. My Casio watch uses a crystal but
does gain about a second a day.

Interesting. Until this problem in Europe it had never crossed my mind that
any electronic clock (ie with a digital display or else analogue driven by
stepper motor) would still be synchronised with the mains. I thought that
mains sync technology went out in the 1970s with the gradual demise of
"electric clocks" (ie those with synchronous motors) and that "electronic"
more or less implied a quartz crystal. I confess to being utterly gobsmacked
that the technology still lives on.

That's why I thought that the story about Europe was a great big fuss about
nothing which would only affect a minority of customers.

How wrong I was.

In article ,
NY wrote:
Interesting. Until this problem in Europe it had never crossed my mind
that any electronic clock (ie with a digital display or else analogue
driven by stepper motor) would still be synchronised with the mains. I
thought that mains sync technology went out in the 1970s with the
gradual demise of "electric clocks" (ie those with synchronous motors)
and that "electronic" more or less implied a quartz crystal. I confess
to being utterly gobsmacked that the technology still lives on.

Think you'll find things like cookers and microwaves with digital clocks
are still mains locked. My Neff ones - not *that* old - are.

A really accurate quartz clock isn't cheap to make. And when mains does
stick to averaging out 50 Hz over 24 hours, ideal for something that has
mains all the time. As it won't need adjusting until the hour changes.

--
*I don't have a license to kill, but I do have a learner's permit.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 10/03/2018 20:51, NY wrote:
"Michael Chare" wrote in message
news
On 09/03/2018 20:26, NY wrote:


So true mains-sync clocks (as opposed to free-running or else
periodically syncing to a master clock) sound to be fairly rare, as
mechanical ones with a synchronous motor are gradually replaced with
crystal-controlled ones. I wonder how many people have actually been
affected by it, if most clocks are free running (but accurate) or
periodically synced rather than mains-synced.


I have a number of mains powered clocks with LED and LCD displays. I
would expect them to rely on mains frequency. My Casio watch uses a
crystal but does gain about a second a day.

Interesting. Until this problem in Europe it had never crossed my mind
that any electronic clock (ie with a digital display or else analogue
driven by stepper motor) would still be synchronised with the mains. I
thought that mains sync technology went out in the 1970s with the
gradual demise of "electric clocks" (ie those with synchronous motors)
and that "electronic" more or less implied a quartz crystal. I confess
to being utterly gobsmacked that the technology still lives on.

It was common until fairly recently. Plenty of older industrial control
systems for heating are synchronous motor based - they often don't get
replaced until they fail. Traffic lights are the other big one.

The mains was treated as a long term reliable 50Hz reference source.

That's why I thought that the story about Europe was a great big fuss
about nothing which would only affect a minority of customers.

How wrong I was.

OTOH there are not that many situations where being 5-10 minutes adrift
from actual UTC can make a significant difference. It isn't that long
ago that cheap mechanical watched used to drift significantly in the
days before quartz crystal locked oscillators.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

In article ,
NY wrote:
Is that really that case? I would have thought it would only affect
mechanical clocks with synchronous motors, and that all electronic
clocks would use a built-in quartz crystal as their time reference.

Not so. I've got two large LED digital clocks here which are mains locked.
Since they have to run off mains due to the power consumption of the LEDs.

Generally, they're closer to the real time when it comes to have to alter
them when the hour changes than the average cheap quartz one.

--
*If I worked as much as others, I would do as little as they *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
NY wrote:
Is that really that case? I would have thought it would only affect
mechanical clocks with synchronous motors, and that all electronic
clocks would use a built-in quartz crystal as their time reference.

Not so. I've got two large LED digital clocks here which are mains locked.
Since they have to run off mains due to the power consumption of the LEDs.

Generally, they're closer to the real time when it comes to have to alter
them when the hour changes than the average cheap quartz one.

Ah, I was mistaken in that case. I naively assumed that modern mains powered
clocks and CH/cooker timers etc were simply a battery-driven quartz clock
mechanism with a PSU in place of the battery. I didn't realise that modern
clocks (as opposed to old ones with synchronous motors) still synced to the
mains.

In that case, it *is* a problem.

In article ,
NY wrote:
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
NY wrote:
Is that really that case? I would have thought it would only affect
mechanical clocks with synchronous motors, and that all electronic
clocks would use a built-in quartz crystal as their time reference.

Not so. I've got two large LED digital clocks here which are mains locked.
Since they have to run off mains due to the power consumption of the LEDs.

Generally, they're closer to the real time when it comes to have to alter
them when the hour changes than the average cheap quartz one.

Ah, I was mistaken in that case. I naively assumed that modern mains powered
clocks and CH/cooker timers etc were simply a battery-driven quartz clock
mechanism with a PSU in place of the battery. I didn't realise that modern
clocks (as opposed to old ones with synchronous motors) still synced to the
mains.

In that case, it *is* a problem.

It's not been up until the last few weeks.

One of the large digit LED clocks I've got is my alarm clock. Being rather
long sighted means I can read it in bed in the dark without needing specs,
etc. I usually listen to the radio while dropping off to sleep and can
check it against the pips. Generally, it was within a few seconds (up to
say 30) of being correct, and sometimes fast, sometimes slow. But over the
last couple of months have had to re-set it three times. And since I have
another mains locked clock which is the same, not a fault on it.

--
*To err is human. To forgive is against company policy.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

I do recall the 3 day week when the minors strike was on and then the cps
were often all over the place and in some places where supplies had to be
maintained, generators were in use and these were far from stable, yes
clocks were inaccurate, and old fashioned turntables and tape recorders were
all over the place, but generally no real harm occurred.
Brian

--
----- -
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please!
"NY" wrote in message
o.uk...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43321113 makes it sound as if it's
a big problem that affects significant numbers of alarm clocks, central
heating timers and oven clocks.

Is that really that case? I would have thought it would only affect
mechanical clocks with synchronous motors, and that all electronic clocks
would use a built-in quartz crystal as their time reference. Are there
many mechanical clocks and central heating timers still in use? Or are
there any electronic clocks/timers that sync to the mains rather than
their own quartz crystal? Is it as important as it used to be for the
mains frequency to be kept within such very tight tolerances and to
average out at 50 Hz over any 24-hour period so there is no nett loss or
gain?

My parents have one mains clock with a synchronous motor, but all their
other clocks, and all of our clocks, are mains or battery-powered
electronic (ie digital or else analogue-by-stepper-motor).

On 09/03/2018 18:58, NY wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43321113 makes it sound as if
it's a big problem that affects significant numbers of alarm clocks,
central heating timers and oven clocks.

Is that really that case? I would have thought it would only affect
mechanical clocks with synchronous motors, and that all electronic
clocks would use a built-in quartz crystal as their time reference. Are
there many mechanical clocks and central heating timers still in use? Or
are there any electronic clocks/timers that sync to the mains rather
than their own quartz crystal? Is it as important as it used to be for

There is a fair proportion of clocks in traffic lights and domestic
settings that rely on mains frequency being on a daily average right. I
can't see that 5-10 minutes delay will cause all that much grief but it
might be a nuisance where rush hour altered flow timings are affected.

the mains frequency to be kept within such very tight tolerances and to
average out at 50 Hz over any 24-hour period so there is no nett loss or
gain?

There is a lot of legacy kit out there that uses mains frequency.

My parents have one mains clock with a synchronous motor, but all their
other clocks, and all of our clocks, are mains or battery-powered
electronic (ie digital or else analogue-by-stepper-motor).

These days 32kHz clock crystal mechanisms and RTCs are dirt cheap but it
was not always the case and there is a lot of legacy kit out there.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 09/03/2018 18:58, NY wrote:


http://watt-logic.com/2018/03/10/frequency-deviation/