Can atomic clock in Houston receive NIST signal?

If antenna icons mean the same as those of an Oregon Scientific unit, your clock's losing the icon altogether means the clock did not receive (enough) usable signal.

Here, near the PA/ NY border, my two different Oregon Scientific clocks have no trouble receiving WWVB. TX is much closer to Boulder so one would think that WWVB would be stronger than here in NY. However, I read - from a person who seems to know what he's about when it comes to electronics - that where he lives (even closer to Boulder than TX) WWVB reception varies between poor and non-existant.

A $10 "atomic" clock? Cool. I would like to take a look under the hood of one of those. But I have never seen a Walgreens here in NY State. :-(

I have a wall clock (Atomix) and a watch (Casio) that receive it with no trouble -- the wall clock is receiving the signal about 23 hours a day, from the looks of it...

--
  Patrick "The Chief Instigator" Humphrey (patrick@io.com)  Houston, Texas
     www.chiefinstigator.us.tt/aeros.php  (TCI's 2004-05 Houston Aeros)
               LAST GAME: Houston 1, Milwaukee 0 (February 5)
             NEXT GAME:  Tuesday, February 8 vs. Utah, 11:05 AM

Je 6 Feb 2005 07:45:02 -0800, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com skribis:

According to the NIST web site, apart from the Pacific Northwest, and the Florida peninsula, at certain times of day, WWVB is above 100 microvolts per meter in all the lower 48.

TX is well covered.

--
Then there's duct tape ... 
              (Garrison Keillor)

Take a look under the hood, and see if you can tap into the existing antenna, and add some wire to extend it. Maybe take it apart, scan it, or photograph it, and someone here can suggest where you can tap into it.

PBS has nothing to do with this.

Those clocks receive a 60KHz signal from Colorado, the low frequency chosen for good penetration.

And I've never had a problem with my $20 clock from Radio Shack, here in Montreal, which has to be further away from Colorada than Houston.

Placement can be a factor. I did have to fiddle a bit with where I put it when I got it a year ago. And there are some places in the house where I lose the signal, even though the change in location is in yards.

I suspect there is fairly little difference between clocks, with cosmetics being the big factor. So cost likely means very little.

Local noise can affect reception. Placing it on a tv set likely will mess up the clock's ability to receive the WWVB signal.

Many tend to only check the WWVB signal once a day, usually in the very early hours of the morning when reception may be best and local interfereance minimal. If that's the design, it may not sync up until enough time has elapsed. Of course, some have a button to press to sync on demand, which allows multiple attempts as the clock is moved around.

Michael

Thanks to everybody. It's embarrassing to say but I have to admit that I was not patient enough when I posted the original message this morning (around 10 Central Time). I just came back home. Now it's

5:40pm. This clock shows stable wave tower icon! And the time is slightly slower than most clocks at home so I adjust all other clocks based on this one.

Yes, it is < $10. In fact, it's labeled $9.99 but they charged me $7.99 plus tax for some reason. I put it on my computer desk all day today but kept laptop in standby mode, a few inches away. The clock faced east. But I guess none of these matters. Patience does.

Thanks again.

Yong Huang

Location and orientation are key considerations to making one of these guys work well. Be sure to keep the clock well away (>8 ft) from any TVs and computers. Orient the clock so that the antenna is broadside to the direction of Boulder, CO from your location. Check the instructions to see which way the clock should be positioned relative to Boulder. If your clock is placed inside a building with a lot of metal in the structure (steel wall studs) or surroundings (metal sidng), that may inhibit good reception.

These clocks normally only try to sync with WWVB around midnite, which is normally the time the signal strength is highest. You might wait until late at night and try to sync manually. I live in Fla, and have had no trouble making several of these clocks work reliably.

--
Dave M
MasonDG44 at comcast dot net  (Just subsitute the appropriate characters in 
the address)

Never take a laxative and a sleeping pill at the same time!!

The clock is too cheap, defective and being dumped on the market at a low price.

| Is this because the built-in antenna is too weak, | Houston is too far from Colorado where NIST real atomic clock is, the | unit is too cheap (

you obviously haven't read his subsequent post

your response is cheap, defective, and was dumped on this newsgroup

I bought one for $14.98 three days ago which is designed for setting on a table as well as hanging on a wall. It was shortly after 2:00 PM EST (I am in Virginia), and I tried everything you did, indoor and outdoor, EXCEPT manually adjusting the time which started at 12:00 AM on January

1, and nothing worked.

In the following one hour and a half, it attempted to receive the signal again (by showing the radio tower icon) but failed.

Then I put it on a desk and left home. When I got home after 2:00 AM, the clock HAD successfully received the signal. Month, Date and Day of the Week were all right.

So far, everything appears fine.

Roland

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:

that

I dished out 50 bucks for a radio controlled (projection) clock from "The Sharper Image" and I have to say I'm kind of disappointed. I waited for over an hour during initial setup and tried moving it to a thousand different locations and different orientations and the closest I could get to receiving a signal was a blinking tower for no longer than 2 minutes. I've even turned of my LCD monitor, wireless phones, bluetooth transmitter and still it does not receive the signal. I've given in and have set it manually but the unit is still supposed to check every night at 12 and I will wait and see if it will actually synchronize (ever).

I just realized that ever since I purchased my clock the weather has been nothing but cloudy skies. Could that be the cause of the poor, if any, reception?

Can't rule it out, but if you were doing the initial setup during daylight hours, you shouldn't be surprised at no reception. While WWVB can be received during the day, it's really more of a nighttime band.

--
John Miller, N4VU
email domain: n4vu.com; username: jsm(@)

Be patient. Very often WWVB comes in like gangbusters here in New York State during the day, but WWVB usually comes in best at night no matter where you are. I would not be surprised if your clock has set itself by now.

Neato, those projection clocks! I picked one of those off the shelf at a regional chain store about 10 years ago. Drooled drooled over it for a moment before sighing and putting it back. The store was too bright to see the projected image, even at less than 12", so I decided not to risk disappointment (closeout; "all sales final").

I've had all kinds of problems with mine too, and I live in Denver, fer pete's sake!

One of mine is an Atomix and it synchs most of the time, but then all of a sudden it's way off. I contacted the mfg about it and was totally ignored, they never answered me.

I just bought a different brand that takes an AC adapter and tried running it off that, but it wouldn't synch at all, then I put batteries in it and it received full signal strength and would, so I plugged the adapter back in and it's been fine, it just HAS to have batteries in it for some reason. It had low signal strength ( it reads a scale of 0-5 ) without the batteries and is ok with them, with a 4-5 strength. Go figure.

But the Atomix one wont use an adapter, only batteries and it's flaky, even here in Denver, we're like 60 miles from the 60khz transmitter!

It may have something to do with the antenna? Does anyone know? Would a ground wire help, or just a wire hanging off the battery clips in the case?

--
A Voice Of Freedom in the
United States of America

Isn't it 60khz though? These clocks don't work off the 10-15-20 MHz bands, do they? I thought they used a loop antenna inside.

--
A Voice Of Freedom in the
United States of America

Unit still has not be able to successfully synchronize, but Los Angeles hasn't seen the sky or sun in quite a while so I'm not surprised. Knowing that the WWVB bounces their signal off the ionosphere (which I read is above the clouds) it makes sense for this lack of reception.

I'll wait it out and see...