Hi If your wrist watch is holding 3 seconds per year without some sort of external correction, that’s pretty amazing …. 10 seconds a month is doing well.
Bob > On Sep 29, 2021, at 2:35 PM, Alec Teal <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi there, > > I have a question and I cannot think of anyone better to ask, for a project > we need to time some things which are connected to a computer, using NTP and > later using a GPS over bluetooth serial ports, we have discovered that > computer clocks are terrible > > If you remove a linear drift (for example assuming it ticks at 1.00026 > seconds per second) it gets less terrible, and Linux can do this but it is > clear that the computer clock doesn't expose this coefficient to the OS to > let it compensate, it must be found (eg through NTP) - any ideas why? > > > But more concretely, my watch is actually pretty good, it's off by < 3 > seconds and hasn't been set probably this year (I don't tend to bother with > DST stuff, not for any reason just never get round to it) - when I was > growing up and even now wall-clocks are not so terrible that I have to fix > them (or NTP does with computers) very routinely. > > My theory is that super cheap crappy quartz clocks are now used in things > which can be reasonably expected to be online most of the time, and thus use > NTP - my watch cannot (and probably has temperature correction too? Given the > varied temps it is exposed to) any truth to this? > > This is a very open ended question I understand, but if clocks were as > terrible as I've found every computer and thing I've checked recently, why > don't I remember setting wall clocks easily once a week? > > > Alec > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] -- To unsubscribe send an > email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe, go to and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] -- To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to and follow the instructions there.
