Consumer electronics with RTC annoyances

But they're quite rich in iron.

--
Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page:  http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
  I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
     boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

One stove we had when I was a kid had a switched, timed 15 A outlet, but didn't time cooking or baking. Mom plugged her kitchen radio into that outlet and knew it was time when the music stopped. :)

--
Greed is the root of all eBay.

On a sunny day (Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:23:23 -0800) it happened snipped-for-privacy@radagast.org (Dave Platt) wrote in :

Indeed :) Or plastic these days.

Some are aluminum, others are brass as well. The worst are pot metal...

--
Greed is the root of all eBay.

A fair proportion of ovens will not operate at all until their clock has been adjusted (setting to 00:01 will do). My parents is like that.

My main annoyance was actually with a new mains powered *alarm* clock which makes tea in the morning and it turns out resets its time to midnight every glitch. This is a distinct step backwards its defunct analogue predecessor which lasted nearly 26 years. They are a bit Heath-Robinson (Rube-Goldberg to our US cousins). A slightly older model gives the impression - more modern ones were angular and the most sought after one (a semi-antique now) includes a radio.

It is hard to boil a litre of water without a mains supply. Shame that the designers of the modern LCD based one did not make it robust wrt mains failure - central heating timers seem to manage to get it right!

Regards, Martin Brown

If they are continuously mains powered then yes. I actually know of some gear where a GPS has been installed to avoid having to set the clock! This strikes me as overkill since the unit cannot be operated without being mounted on extremely rigid foundations. And many are permanently installed in observatories for their entire working life. The GPS signal inside a closed metal dome is not always very good - and it can still be a bit iffy with the dome slit open. Smaller observatories with fibreglass domes do not experience problems unless they use fancy exterior aluminium based paint.

I found 3 independent RTCs in one dire design - it allowed for some interesting and unnecessary synchronisation faults. And they had skimped (omitted) on the trimmer capacitor so it ran out by 15s/month (pretty much all of them by a similar amount +/- 5s). Pretty bad in a few thousand pounds worth of kit that a $5 watch keeps better time :(

Don't think it even needs a supercap for the current the RTC takes

3300uF and a diode looks like it will do the job for a hour or so. Annoying that it will void the warrantee to make the thing work properly. Woken up again last night by misbehaving alarm.

The rapid thaw is playing havoc with the mains supply - short 10s trips have been all too frequent this week. Normally the supply is fine.

Regards, Martin Brown

The watch has better thermal regulation.

--
Greed is the root of all eBay.

The stove, when I was a kid, was an Hotpoint that was purchased just soon enough after WW II that it was probably designed in the 1930's.

It had a timed bake feature that used the time of day clock. There were a couple of extra knobs that adjusted a ring (in red) on the dial of the clock, to indicate start and end times.

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

I have battery backed clocks that although I don't have to reset them, they start accumulating extra minutes during power glitches due to poor filtering of the 60Hz line reference.

--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT
"The RFI-EMI-GUY"©

"Use only Genuine Interocitor Parts" Tom Servo  ;-P

per=20

microwave=20

yet set=20

must=20

certain=20

microwave=20

the ones=20

multiple=20

Actually that was a holdover from the commercial kitchens where they were= =20 originally used. Real commercial ovens have time vs temperature and even= =20 humidity profile programmability in some models.

time=20

value of=20

I remember electric ovens from the early 1960s that had the timed bake = operation.

teamakers

now

off.

And which UPS do you recommend for the coffee maker or the electric oven?