MSF clocks
 

I've got two, and one which I think uses Rugby re-set sometime Sunday
morning, and was correct when I first looked at it.

The other one didn't, and waited until sometime last night to update. It's
a different make, and may use the German equivalent to Rugby as it gives a
choice of UK or Continental time. And I've noticed recently the little
radio indicator isn't often showing it's receiving a signal. Although it's
usually spot on against the GTS, so must be getting it sometimes.

The 'Rugby' one always shows it's getting a signal.

Has anything changed that might effect this?

--
*We waste time, so you don't have to *

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

The 'Rugby' one always shows it's getting a signal.

Has anything changed that might effect this?

Radio propagation issues from Germany?

Rugby is much closer, so may not be affected quite so much by atmospheric
conditions.

Christian.

In article ,
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
I've got two, and one which I think uses Rugby re-set sometime Sunday
morning, and was correct when I first looked at it.

The other one didn't, and waited until sometime last night to update. It's
a different make, and may use the German equivalent to Rugby as it gives a
choice of UK or Continental time. And I've noticed recently the little
radio indicator isn't often showing it's receiving a signal. Although it's
usually spot on against the GTS, so must be getting it sometimes.


I've got one that is much worse at locking onto the signal (rugby I assume)
than the other one in the same room. I seem to recall that it won't reset
until it has had 3 readings of the same time in a row - I guess if it has
a borderline signal this might take a while.

Saying that, it worked fine this year but I did see the symptoms you
describe last Oct when the clocks went back.

Has anything changed that might effect this?

http://www.npl.co.uk/time/msfoutages.html doesn't show any booked work.

Darren

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 16:35:52 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

I've got two, and one which I think uses Rugby re-set sometime Sunday
morning, and was correct when I first looked at it.

The other one didn't, and waited until sometime last night to update. It's
a different make, and may use the German equivalent to Rugby as it gives a
choice of UK or Continental time. And I've noticed recently the little
radio indicator isn't often showing it's receiving a signal. Although it's
usually spot on against the GTS, so must be getting it sometimes.

The 'Rugby' one always shows it's getting a signal.

Has anything changed that might effect this?

I have had the same problem, the clock does not update the time from
the transmitter automatically at 1am/2am/3am as specified in the
instructions.

When I press the button to update from the transmitter manually
nothing happens except a flashing antenna symbol and it eventually
this times out.

It did update over the weekend and indicated 'DST' whatever that is
and was one hour ahead of UK time.

I often experimented with it, and wondered if local electronic devices
are causing reception problems, or reception of the transmissions is
too weak, and updates only occur under certain propagation conditions.

J

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
I've got two, and one which I think uses Rugby re-set sometime Sunday
morning, and was correct when I first looked at it.

The other one didn't, and waited until sometime last night to update. It's
a different make, and may use the German equivalent to Rugby as it gives a
choice of UK or Continental time. And I've noticed recently the little
radio indicator isn't often showing it's receiving a signal. Although it's
usually spot on against the GTS, so must be getting it sometimes.

The 'Rugby' one always shows it's getting a signal.


I've got both English Oregon and authentic German Clocks bought in Frankfurt
which are set to -1 hour time. No problems with the BST switch, but the
German ones are definitely more sensitive to radio noise and stop receiving
the Hamburg transmitter when close to my computer.

john

In uk.d-i-y, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
I've got two, and one which I think uses Rugby re-set sometime Sunday
morning, and was correct when I first looked at it.

The other one didn't, and waited until sometime last night to update. It's
a different make, and may use the German equivalent to Rugby as it gives a
choice of UK or Continental time. And I've noticed recently the little
radio indicator isn't often showing it's receiving a signal. Although it's
usually spot on against the GTS, so must be getting it sometimes.

Has anything changed that might effect this?

One (of the many) in our house was about 24 hours late updating, and it
turned out that the battery was on its last legs.

--
Mike Barnes

In article ,
John wrote:
I've got both English Oregon and authentic German Clocks bought in
Frankfurt which are set to -1 hour time. No problems with the BST
switch, but the German ones are definitely more sensitive to radio
noise and stop receiving the Hamburg transmitter when close to my
computer.

Ah - the one in question lives right next to this computer. However, I've
tried moving it to another room - or outside - and still no signal showing.
And the computer is shut down when not in use.

--
*To steal ideas from *one* person is plagiarism; from many, research*

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

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
John wrote:
I've got both English Oregon and authentic German Clocks bought in
Frankfurt which are set to -1 hour time. No problems with the BST
switch, but the German ones are definitely more sensitive to radio
noise and stop receiving the Hamburg transmitter when close to my
computer.

Ah - the one in question lives right next to this computer. However, I've
tried moving it to another room - or outside - and still no signal
showing.
And the computer is shut down when not in use.


Try removing the battery for a few seconds and replacing, to reset the chip.
The logic in some clocks seems to screw up, but resetting always gets the
radio symbol back for me.

j

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

The other one didn't, and waited until sometime last night to update. It's
a different make, and may use the German equivalent to Rugby as it gives a
choice of UK or Continental time.

Our cheap alarm clock, which uses the German transmitter, updated itself
when it was supposed to... but it is very sensitive to where it's placed.
The one we had prior used the Rugby signal, and that was better at
getting a signal, but worse at updating...

Lee
--
Email address is valid, but is unlikely to be read.

DST = Daylight savings time.

--
Yours
Jason

In article ,
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
I've got two, and one which I think uses Rugby re-set sometime Sunday
morning, and was correct when I first looked at it.

The other one didn't, and waited until sometime last night to update. It's
a different make, and may use the German equivalent to Rugby as it gives a
choice of UK or Continental time. And I've noticed recently the little
radio indicator isn't often showing it's receiving a signal. Although it's
usually spot on against the GTS, so must be getting it sometimes.

The 'Rugby' one always shows it's getting a signal.

I have a home-made rugby one connected to a server and it handled the
change OK, but it might be the NTP code which managed it.

If you can talk NTP, feel free to look at essen.drogon.net but I never
guarantee its accuracy ;-)

Gordon

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)"
writes
I've got two, and one which I think uses Rugby re-set sometime Sunday
morning, and was correct when I first looked at it.

The other one didn't, and waited until sometime last night to update. It's
a different make, and may use the German equivalent to Rugby as it gives a
choice of UK or Continental time. And I've noticed recently the little
radio indicator isn't often showing it's receiving a signal. Although it's
usually spot on against the GTS, so must be getting it sometimes.

The 'Rugby' one always shows it's getting a signal.

Has anything changed that might effect this?

My German one quite often seems to lose signal strength, but it seemed
to change to BST without problems. I have been seen waving the bloody
thing around above my head in the garden when I replace the batteries in
order to find signal strength only to find that it's done it while I
wasn't looking

--
geoff

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 19:27:43 +0100, "John"
wrote:

Try removing the battery for a few seconds and replacing, to reset the chip.
The logic in some clocks seems to screw up, but resetting always gets the
radio symbol back for me.

On this very topic, I noted that the MSF clock on my desk didn't pick
up the hour change over the weekend, it always has done before.

I removed and reinstalled the batteries, it still didn't do the
necessary.

Earlier this evening I bought a new set of batteries and installed
them. Within minutes it had picked up the MSF signal and set itself
up.

So don't rule out that the batteries might need replacing.....

Andrew

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Lee wrote:

The one we had prior used the Rugby signal, and that was better at
getting a signal, but worse at updating...

My bugbear with these is the pretty analogue ones - one at work
intermittently, and one at home consistently, is off by one minute. You
take out the battery and reinsert it, the hands sweep majestically round
to the nearest of 12, 4, or 8 o'clock, and sit waiting for sync. A
coupla minutes later, sync it does: but while the seconds are perfect,
the minute hand is one position back from where it should be.

It seems like a fault in either the way the minute hand's been put on
the shaft (but surely there's some sort of positioning key!?) or the
shaft encoder or whatever feedback mechanism it uses (surely there's
*some* sort of feedback mech to get a reference position for the
hands!?), since when I say 'sweep majestically round to ... o'clock',
the consistently-faulty one actually sweeps them round majestically to
one minute *before* the Starting Position. I've not dared try to pull
the hands right off and reposition (well, OK, I *did* dare try, but
didn't dare pull more than very gently ;-), and I keep this off-by-one
clock in my study, where I know how to interpret its quirk ;-) But it's
the sort of thing which sets my perfectionist teeth on edge!

Stefek

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 16:35:52 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

I've got two, and one which I think uses Rugby re-set sometime Sunday
morning, and was correct when I first looked at it.

The other one didn't, and waited until sometime last night to update. It's
a different make, and may use the German equivalent to Rugby as it gives a
choice of UK or Continental time. And I've noticed recently the little
radio indicator isn't often showing it's receiving a signal. Although it's
usually spot on against the GTS, so must be getting it sometimes.

The 'Rugby' one always shows it's getting a signal.

Has anything changed that might effect this?

I also have two - the one up here in the study is on Rugby, and
changed correctly (well, all right, I didn't stop up all Saturday
night to see it do it's stuff, but it was correct early on Sunday),
but the kitchen one, which uses the German transmitter, didn't correct
itself until Monday.

The fact that it DOES correct itself more or less exonerates the
battery (cell actually).

On a few occasions annually the kitchen one seems to go a few hours
out for a day or so, so I wonder if their transmissions are prone to
some quirkiness...

I'm still amazed that a single (not especially 'high power') AA cell
can happily drive a radio receiver, logic circuitry and a clock with
big(gish) hands for a year or more :-)

--
Frank Erskine

Chedk the batteries. This is the most common cause of failure.

--
Peter Crosland

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 22:48:12 +0100, Stefek Zaba
wrote:

Lee wrote:

The one we had prior used the Rugby signal, and that was better at
getting a signal, but worse at updating...

My bugbear with these is the pretty analogue ones - one at work
intermittently, and one at home consistently, is off by one minute. You
take out the battery and reinsert it, the hands sweep majestically round
to the nearest of 12, 4, or 8 o'clock, and sit waiting for sync. A
coupla minutes later, sync it does: but while the seconds are perfect,
the minute hand is one position back from where it should be.

It seems like a fault in either the way the minute hand's been put on
the shaft (but surely there's some sort of positioning key!?) or the
shaft encoder or whatever feedback mechanism it uses (surely there's
*some* sort of feedback mech to get a reference position for the
hands!?), since when I say 'sweep majestically round to ... o'clock',
the consistently-faulty one actually sweeps them round majestically to
one minute *before* the Starting Position. I've not dared try to pull
the hands right off and reposition (well, OK, I *did* dare try, but
didn't dare pull more than very gently ;-), and I keep this off-by-one
clock in my study, where I know how to interpret its quirk ;-) But it's
the sort of thing which sets my perfectionist teeth on edge!

Stefek


They probably run WindowsCE......

Since there are now more and more devices around with embedded 802.11,
I am surprised that nobody has thought of doing a clock which syncs by
periodically doing an NTP request.



--

..andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

In article ,
"Dave Plowman (News)" writes:
I've got two, and one which I think uses Rugby re-set sometime Sunday
morning, and was correct when I first looked at it.

The other one didn't, and waited until sometime last night to update. It's
a different make, and may use the German equivalent to Rugby as it gives a
choice of UK or Continental time. And I've noticed recently the little
radio indicator isn't often showing it's receiving a signal. Although it's
usually spot on against the GTS, so must be getting it sometimes.

The 'Rugby' one always shows it's getting a signal.

Has anything changed that might effect this?

I built a Rugby one some ~15 years ago. At that time, the
German transmitter didn't claim cover much of the UK.

I don't know what sort of aerial the current commercial
products use, but if it's a ferrite rod aerial (which is
what I used), then these are very directional, and if you
rotate the clock by 90º from the ideal position, it
will get no signal at all.

--
Andrew Gabriel