Thursday, October 19, 2017

WiFiChron "user manual"

With the daylight saving time ("DST") fall back fast approaching (Nov 5, 2017 for North America), a few explanations and details are required to prepare the WiFiChron clock to automatically set itself.

As much as I would like the menu items to be intuitive, I have to acknowledge that some of them look a little cryptic, and the reason is the 8-character space constraint of the display. Below is the list of all menu items, in the order they appear when the "Set" (left-most) button is pressed.
  1. Alrm on/off - alarm on or off by pressing either the "Up" or "Down" button;
  2. Al 00.00 - alarm time; first set the hours (flashing) by pressing either the "Up" or "Down" button, then move to the minutes by pressing "Set" (minutes will flash); set minutes with "Up"/"Down" buttons;
  3. HH.MM.SS - current time; move from hours to minutes, to seconds by pressing the "Set" button; set the flashing value by pressing "Up" or "Down";
  4. 12/24 Hour - display time in either military (24 hour) mode or am/pm (12 hour) mode;
  5. Scroll 4 - text scrolling speed;
  6. Chimes Y/N - chime (or not) every half hour (top and bottom of the hour);
  7. Moon   Y/N - display (or not) moon phases, in scrolling words (calculated based on the date);
  8. Brite  27 - display brightness;
  9. Yr    2017 - current year;
  10. Month 1 - current month;
  11. Date  1 - current day of the month;
  12. TzHr -1 - time zone hours offset;
  13. TzMn -15 - time zone minutes offset (some places, e.g. Newfoundland and Labrador, use half-hour offsets);
  14. WiFi  Off/On/Ini - connect (or not) to WiFi network (see this post for details);
  15. DST En Y/N - enable or disable automatic time self-adjust when DST changes;
  16. DSTsm 3 - stands for "DST start month"; month for DST spring forward, by default set to 3 (March);
  17. DSTsw 2 - stands for "DST start week"; week of the month for DST spring forward, by default set to 2 (second Sunday);
  18. DSTem 11 - stands for "DST end month"; month for DST fall back, by default set to 11 (November);
  19. DSTew 1 - stands for "DST end week"; week of the month for DST fall back, by default set to 1 (first Sunday);

Here are some photos, courtesy of Tom, of his custom-enclosed, WiFi-enabled, WiFiChron.