Electric watches in Sicily (Italy) running all 20 minutes faster

Hrmmm .... one way this could happen is if the conductive/resistive materials in the electronics are changing or there is a fairly constant weak or very short strong emf wave source somewhere that is increasing the voltage in the circuits. Enough so that it ups the frequency in a crystal oscillator (if it's voltage controlled) or other type of oscillating circuit.

Heat and lots of it (or a long heat wave) would change the conductive/resistive properties of the materials and could increase the frequency of a circuit. This could also account for a fairly even 20 minute error across the board.

Think I'm gonna go with an emf wave. That's the best explanation I've got at the moment. The Temperatures in Sicily are a fairly steady 21 Degrees C. Heat can pretty much be ruled out.

Any reports of people with pace-makers having problems?

-AS-

Wow I am so glad I saw this thread , I had the same thing happen to my digital clock display on my HTC wildfire two weeks ago. It was running 10 mins fast. The time sets automatically . It wasn't just me my friend who has the desire was experiencing the same thing. Then after a few days it went to the correct time. I didn't pay anymore thought to it until reading this thread.

This insane! Thanks for the post!

Originally posted by Urantia1111
i have noticed this on a couple clocks lately. one battery powered and one clock radio which plugs in. both insist on creeping fast by about 8 minutes or so. the battery operated is easy to fix but the radio has a self time set and its bound and determined to stay ahead of schedule. both were quite cheap so maybe thats it but its something ive wondered about. oven and microwave clocks unaffected.

dont forget: time is an illusion. lunchtime, doubly so.

hmmm .... guess you don't have access to an oscilloscope with it's timebase connected to a GPS? but on the other hand, we need a reference that is totally independent (Your GPS has a crystal too, both for it's microprocessor and the GPS receiver itself). It would be interesting to see what the reference frequencies are doing. What do you mean that the radio has it's time self-set? Hmmm, just have a brainwave, if you have an old analogue radio, and can receive HF and extract the time signals from a time-station, you can measure the phase-drift between the time-signal and one of the drifting clocks, and give us some feedback. If the microwave clock and oven clock are unaffected, most probably they run from a stable 50Hz (or 60Hz) mains.

Here is a link to the timing signals :
www.dxinfocentre.com...

Originally posted by Disclosure Agent
that's been pretty much happening to any clock I have seen lately that isn't sync'd up with internet updates..... my alarm clock and microwave have been slowly getting further ahead of my phone and PC and has been tripping me out...

I wonder if this is the reason or just coincidence....

I'm in NSW Australia....

That's exactly what I've been so angry about, I've had to change my alarm clock and microwave clock to match my phone and computer every other day, because they keep getting ahead of the real time.

reply to post by Hellhound604


Incorrect on the battery part. I've had this conversation with a Swiss watch factory owner on batteries while working as a watchmaker for a watch company.
Watch batteries and watches are engineered to keep running normally as long as there is a certain voltage/amperage in the battery. once that point is reached the watch stops. watches consume so little power anyways that's why the battery can last for a year or more on a wristwatch.

Temperature plays a huge factor in watch time deviation. Most watch movements do not have a thermocompensator built in. Usually you only find that in higher end wristwatches.
Krieger Watch had a Marine Chronometer model that was probably on of the most accurate wristwatches in the world giving a plus or minus 8 seconds per year.

New one for me that the clocks in europe used the frequency of the power to regulate themselves. I would think that wouldn't be very reliable.

Originally posted by prof7
These clocks take their time base from the (usually very precise) 50Hz frequency of the European power grid. Usually the grid is synchronized all across Europe and exactly 50Hz are guaranteed everywhere but when some small part of the power grid gets decoupled from the rest of the grid and is running freely for a while then the frequency in this part of the grid might drift a little bit until it is recoupled again with the rest.

There is no mystery here, this is just a technical failure in the power grid. No mystery "impulses" in the grid, this is pure bull#. Just a normal frequency drift as it happens from time to time, every electrical engineer can explain this. All one needs to know is how the grid woks and how these clocks work. Both are neither secret nor mysteries.

Clocks that base their time on crystal oscillators (wrist watches or other kinds of battery driven or mechanical watches that are not connected to the grid) are not affected.

edit on 9-6-2011 by prof7 because: (no reason given)

Whew! for a second there I thought it was all quartz clocks in the area. This would be an amazing thing to happen. Thank you for your clarification on the subject. Had me going there.Time is the most important element of all equations. Change time, and anything is possible.

I must say, I noticed my watches off about a week or so ago. All digital time (cell, comp, tablet) is 7 mins slower than time running off just electric current (car, electric wall clock)

reply to post by Hundroid


Wow. Weird story, OP.

I don't know if it's related, but when I was living in Las Vegas years ago, many people I knew one night had the clocks in Their vehicles shift - but some were ahead an hour and a half, others back seven hours and twelve minutes, or off by 5 hours or any number of minutes off.

Everyone who talked about it was freaked.

Hi All - Ok, this is a bit weird but I'll go ahead and post anyway.

First - I have an eye on Etna 24/7. That being said She's been extra quiet the last few days. (And yes I live in the Province of Catania)...

Now about the time... I don't live by a wrist watch or clock. My alarm clock is when my rooster crows in the morning and when I'm too tired to keep going at night - BUT - for the last two days my little digital clock I keep on the table has 're-set' itself to noon on two occasions.

I blamed it on the batteries - but they seem fine. Then I blamed it on the 'solar flares' - lol - not that I even know if solar flares would effect a little digital clock inside a cement home or no but I was reaching for a reason. I can’t say why, but yes, it has happened and I wouldn’t have thought another thing bout it had I not received a U2U to visit this thread.

As for the article - I hadn't read it - but - I can attest to one thing. 'Flights of fancy' in these cases are rare. If it's being reported from here, a phenomena unusual - you can pretty much bet it's the real deal - or has a pretty obscure reason behind it. You'd have to have a deeper insight into the culture to understand why I say this is true, but, yeah, for the most part it is. I'm not saying there are not 'hoaxes' - but - something of this sort to hit the news is - unusual.

So, I'll keep a look on Etna (as always) and on my little clock and let you know.

If anyone would like me to try an ‘experiment’ let me know - I’m game. Just outline what you’d like me to do and I’ll do it if possible.

Oh, and for further info, I'm not a he but a she.

peace

I'm in Washington DC. I have a Swiss Army watch. No changes here....

Originally posted by grey580
reply to post by Hellhound604

 

Incorrect on the battery part. I've had this conversation with a Swiss watch factory owner on batteries while working as a watchmaker for a watch company.
Watch batteries and watches are engineered to keep running normally as long as there is a certain voltage/amperage in the battery. once that point is reached the watch stops. watches consume so little power anyways that's why the battery can last for a year or more on a wristwatch.

Temperature plays a huge factor in watch time deviation. Most watch movements do not have a thermocompensator built in. Usually you only find that in higher end wristwatches.
Krieger Watch had a Marine Chronometer model that was probably on of the most accurate wristwatches in the world giving a plus or minus 8 seconds per year.

New one for me that the clocks in europe used the frequency of the power to regulate themselves. I would think that wouldn't be very reliable.

In a properly designed watch I would agree with you, but one never knows with very cheap watches, once the battery voltage goes below a specific threshold, the crystal isn't excited enough, so instead of +- 5ppm it could easily go to +-100ppm. (for critical applications you would use 1.5ppm, and if more than that you need to go to TCXO's (temperature compensated crystal oscillators) which can be up to .5ppm, or higher you can go to OCXO (Oven Controlled Crystal oscillators) or higher still GPS-based timers, which give you up to a 340nS resolution).

Most wrist watches uses a diode for regulation of the crystal oscillator, which is calibrated to typically 37C (body temperature), that is why, if you remove your highly accurate wrist watch, you will see it being less accurate if it is not on your arm. So, your body acts as a nicely calibrated constant temperature source, effectively turning the cheap crystal into a nice TCXO. That also explained why, in the days before internet, your cheap wristwatch was more accurate than the clock in your very expensive PC.

Mains frequency, whether 50 or 60Hz, should never deviate more than +-0.2%, so a properly filtered mains time-base is actually more accurate than a uncompensated low-cost crystal, that is about 0.05ppm/C.

I have noticed 2 distinct differences in this thread. Some posters said that the clocks on their ovens, etc, which most probably uses the mains frequency as a time base drifted, and that is easily explained by the mains frequency not correct anymore.

Some other posters have stated, that whilst their oven clocks remained on time, it was their wristwatches, and other digital clocks (which may/may not use crystals), drifted. If more than one of those clocks started to run fast/slow by the same amount, then there is something else going on.

BTW. some more complicated clock systems ( I am now thinking some advanced cars, etc), might use a programmable oscillator. The 32kHz signal is still used, but instead of driving a simple oscillator, it is a timing input for a microprocessor, or a dedicated RTC device, so if the software has some bugs, that reprograms the divider or the RTC-registers of the processor or the RTC, then of course, the time will be wrong.

reply to post by Hellhound604


I've never heard of that before. A watch being calibrated to your body temperature? That never came up in any of my conversations with other watchmakers or manufacturers.

I do know that the COSC tests watches at different temperatures. Their average daily rate is done at 23 C.
Then they go down to 8C and up to 38C. For Swiss Chronometers deviations should be very slight. For other watches more so.

en.wikipedia.org...

In any case deviations from temperature should be slight. Under 20 seconds a month.
More so could indicate that the watch needs a cleaning of parts and re lubricating of a jeweled movement.

cheers.

My teenager mentioned this same thing not long ago, cellphone and stove clock were right on, then all of a sudden one day were 5 minutes off. I thought nothing of it until I saw this thread.

Originally posted by grey580
reply to post by Hellhound604

 

I've never heard of that before. A watch being calibrated to your body temperature? That never came up in any of my conversations with other watchmakers or manufacturers.

I do know that the COSC tests watches at different temperatures. Their average daily rate is done at 23 C.
Then they go down to 8C and up to 38C. For Swiss Chronometers deviations should be very slight. For other watches more so.

en.wikipedia.org...

In any case deviations from temperature should be slight. Under 20 seconds a month.
More so could indicate that the watch needs a cleaning of parts and re lubricating of a jeweled movement.

cheers.

remember, I am not talking about mechanical wrist watches over here, just digital ones. (even though I am old(ish) I hate reading analogue watches......

other than manufacturer's data sheets, I could find this one quickly, and even though they talk about expensive watches here, the same applies to most modern watches that uses a crystal :
"Similar but different modules are used at present by Omega for its Constellation Perpetual Calendar, and Seamaster Professional (shown above) and Seamaster 120m quartz wristwatches, all accurate to ±20 seconds annually. Omega's X-33 multifunction analog-digital watch also appears to be thermocompensated (±36 secs/year). The long discontinued “Marine Chronometer” (±10 secs/year) from Krieger appears to have used a module related to that of the quartz Seamasters, as both feature digital regulation that permit incremental adjustments of ±0.33 seconds per month. Omega's prime competitor Breitling has taken the unusual and welcome step of having ETA upgrade all of its luxury finished 2nd generation quartz modules, both analogue and digital, to 3rd generation performance. In contrast to all of the other TCXO modules from ETA, these newly modified “Superquartz™” modules do not use digital thermocompensation, but instead an analogue thermistor which has improved their accuracy to ±15 seconds a year. The Frederic Piguet calibre 1271 in Breitling's recently discontinued Chronoracer Rattrapante has always been thermocompensated."

people.timezone.com...

if you want to I can add a LOT of data sheets and application notes about temperature compensation of crystal oscillators too.....

Originally posted by grey580
reply to post by Hellhound604

 

I've never heard of that before. A watch being calibrated to your body temperature? That never came up in any of my conversations with other watchmakers or manufacturers.

I do know that the COSC tests watches at different temperatures. Their average daily rate is done at 23 C.
Then they go down to 8C and up to 38C. For Swiss Chronometers deviations should be very slight. For other watches more so.

en.wikipedia.org...

In any case deviations from temperature should be slight. Under 20 seconds a month.
More so could indicate that the watch needs a cleaning of parts and re lubricating of a jeweled movement.

cheers.

just had a nice shower, and feel totally refreshed, and a couple of new ideas came to me whilst showering. Remember, even though temperature-compensation sounds like a big deal, it is not really, and in the stuff I designed it was never even mentioned, just the temperature range in which it will work (-55C to +85C). You can achieve it in a number of ways, depending on how good your requirements are, even the addition of a simple capacitor or resistor could do wonders.
but just to prove that I am not talking crap. Take your el-cheapo digital watch, keep it on your arm, and see how much time it loses/gains in a single month. Then take it off, and leave it off for the same time, and see how much it gained or loosed.

Very odd! I have an addition.. and Im not in Italy

Today I had my car's preprogrammed radio stations wiped out and our electricity didnt go out but the clocks on my stove and bedroom are blinking, but nowhere else in the house and it didnt effect my computer or other computers in the house. I have no idea if its related.. or yet another weird thing happening in my bubble.. but I agree, strange days.

Edit to add : Im in Illinois.. midwest USA. Anyone else in my area having weirdness? Im a skeptic, reasonably rational, and normally only mildly annoyed when weird nonsense happens.. but I was a little more than pissed with my radio stations being nixed.

Hi Silo,

If you could keep us up-to-date on developments, that would be great.

Oh, and for further info, I'm not a he but a she.

Although I was 99.9% of that, I'm not taking chances anymore since I got into a fierce discussion with Astyanax about how I was sure that he was a she (which he isn't by the way).....

Peace

ok i skimmed some posts so sorry if this was already offered for a reason.
Could it be the recent solar flare activity. I heard that it got so bad in some places they had to re route planes
I try and post some links when i've done eating

EDIT: OK seem like there was a big solar flare yesterday the 8th. here the news link
news.yahoo.com...

Originally posted by Bixxi3
ok i skimmed some posts so sorry if this was already offered for a reason.
Could it be the recent solar flare activity. I heard that it got so bad in some places they had to re route planes
I try and post some links when i've done eating

Thats sort of what I assumed.. so I didnt get too excited.
In our local news they spoke of cell drops,local stations being effected and mentioned GPS interruptions.. and I can attest to the local stations being static-prone and me dropping tv signal every so often... the TV in the kitchen is on an antenna just for local news. I just really dont know enough about the various ways clocks and car preprogrammed stations fit in with that.. so I didnt make an ass out of myself too much concerning it! LOL!If it starts screwing with my computer I may have to run around in circles and foam at the mouth.. shouting DOOM!!!

ALso, several threads on the CME... and youtubes of the actual flare are about on ATS