...Or if you own a cell phone, or a personal computer which connects to the web... :)

We have all of those. My mate still loves the clock.

Don't blame you. My most recent phone (Samsung T509) actually had a special announcement for me, to the effect that the time change had occurred, when I turned it on Sunday morning. How sweet. Like I needed to know my utensils were functioning as designed. :) I still had to update my microwave (ok, I'm OCD) and my bedroom clock radio, not to mention the dash clock in my car.

What we really need are in-dash automobile clocks which don't need to be updated. Got into my car this afternoon, and nearly freaked out before I remembered the time change! Heh.

What I truly enjoyed -back when I had a Sprint account- was that my Samsung phone not only kept accurate time, but the screen background changed according to time of day, with daylight, twilight, and night appearing at the appropriate moment. 'Twas a vi660, and if it hadn't cost $65 / month, I would have kept both the service and the phone.

We got a neat little LED projection atomic clock off Amazon this year. We can always see the time on the ceiling now.

I like it.
1) because it's not digital
2) because I had to get on a ladder to get up to my wall clock (rather similar to that one in looks) to reset it yesterday.

Good idea.

I had the wooden version. Lasted about two years, as did a contemporaneous La Crosse weather station.

Complete junk.

Art,

We have only had ours for 6 months. So you may be correct. But maybe you just got a bad one. Time will tell.

Technical note:

The clock problem you may be having Art is a weak battery. And/or improper placement.

Because a microprocessor sets the clock good voltage is important - esp at start up.

It is also important if you live more than 500 or 1,000 miles from Boulder to have the clock on a non-metalic wall that faces Boulder. That could mean that in some locations to get a strong enough signal the clock needs to be in a window. And you may also have to angle it to get a strong enough signal if your wall does not face Boulder within 10 degrees or so. Houses are usually built on a North/South Axis so look at a map and take the actual required direction into consideration.

These clocks receive a low frequency RADIO signal. With all the technical considerations that entails. I'd love to know when you bought your clock and the failure mode. What was the battery voltage?

It may be if you don't want to take the technical considerations into account a more expensive clock may be in order.

M. Simon, since you are interested:

I got the clock 4 or 5 years ago, so it was 2-3 years back when it died. It simply stopped running, and at first I just assumed the batteries were dead. However, it showed no sign of life with new batteries, even after I verified their orientation and checked them with a voltmeter. I'm pretty sure that was the first time I changed them. It seems like there were some buttons and other things to try, but I don't remember exactly. (I have a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, so I'd like to think I'm reasonably competent to perform such operations.)

I set the clock aside and tried again a couple of months later, again with no luck. I also found no way to open the plastic mechanism compartment non-destructively, so I ended up not doing that either. I do not believe it was a radio problem because a) it should have just run along at the wrong time in the absence of a signal, and b) I live IN Boulder. I do recall a couple of times when it was working that it somehow synced to the wrong time by several whole hours, and then stayed that way for a while (a few hours?) before correcting itself. That doesn't seem like good behavior in a region where it should be getting a very strong radio signal.

Chances are you will have better luck even if you have the same shoddy design. However, I will be looking for a different brand. Yes, it will probably be more expensive as La Crosse seems to dominate the low end for these things. Nothing I've seen has struck my fancy yet.

Art,

Thanks. It is always fun discussing stuff like this with a pro.

My understanding is that the design changed in 2007 or 2008. From the Amazon site - I haven't seen any reviews there that are recent. So it is possible they have fixed the problem you had.

I do know that the chip of the earlier models was incorrectly programmed for the DST bit. Maybe they fixed your problem as well.

I was just reading a Design News article about defective product. They suggested ALWAYS reporting problems to the dealer or mfg. I think that is a good idea. It is hard to fix field problems without feedback.

BTW I'm an aerospace EE. Rockford, Illinois.

Thanks, Simon, but sorry I don't have any big technical insight into this. Sounds like you've taken a lot more interest than I ever did -- it was just another broken bit of cheap-and-out-of-warranty consumer electronics to me.

I've seen some pretty nifty presentations and articles about the time-keeping tech they do here, but I always assumed the radio transmissions were pretty conventional and boring. I just googled that it takes a full minute to transmit the 53 bit time code on the 60kHz carrier, and apparently it is quite primitive. On the other hand, it's pretty amazing they can cover the whole continent with a single transmitter.

I must admit I made no attempt to provide feedback to La Crosse. I'm sure some of their engineers would have been glad to hear about it, but my experience is that the organization often shields them from such "distractions."

I'm a big fan of WWVB. With proper calibration you can get time accurate to 10 ms and frequency to 1 part in 1E11. Pretty good for what is fundamentally (not in its modern incarnation) radio technology from the 1910 era. Back in 1910 the 60 KHz would have been generated by specially designed alternators. I believe they were called Andersen generators.

In fact I'm working on a WWVB receiver in my spare time. So far I have a low noise antenna amplifier designed. I'm also working on a design for a PLL synced to the 60KHz that runs at 27 MHz. So in theory calibration of a local oscillator to 3E7 can be done in a second or so.

Fun stuff. Of course the modern way is GPS. But I find the old stuff romantic.

The European counterpart of WWVB is the DCF-77 transmitter near Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It transmits at 77.5 kHz and its range is about 1,000 miles. There is a wide choice of radio-controlled clocks over here, which use its signal. They are also built into higher-end cars. Never mind the fact that this transmitter also needs a full minute to transmit the date and time (in binary). After that, the receivers can use the radio signal itself for timekeeping.