• Registered (unregistered)

    If the old thermostat wasn't Internet-connected, it might have had problems automatically adjusting also if DST rules get changed.

  • COBOL Dilettante (unregistered)

    I remember trying to adjust a set of church clock chimes for daylight saving. The chimes were operated by an ultra-modern digital system that was supposed to correct and adjust itself over the Internet. Nevertheless, at a quarter past seven in the evening, the display on the console was still showing 2015.

    It took us a few minutes to work out that we were looking at the year ...

  • Coyote (unregistered) in reply to Registered

    It's quite possible the old thermostat was a first gen Nest or something that would have always gotten the correct time from the internet, but this new system requires its own brand of "communicating" thermostat. Those things are annoying because you can't use any 3rd party smart thermostat like Ecobee.

  • 516052 (unregistered)

    And that is why you newer buy mission critical systems that use proprietary vendor locked control mechanisms.

  • Brian (unregistered) in reply to Registered

    Many years ago, I bought a clock that had the cool feature to automatically adjust for DST. This was in the age of "dumb" devices when only computers were connected to the internet, so the time change was embedded in the firmware. Shortly after that, the government changed the DST schedule (so people would buy more candy on Halloween or something like that)... so the clock automatically changed itself on the wrong days, and I still had to manually change it for DST.

    I still have that clock, but now it lives in the guest room where no one cares that it's wrong for a few weeks.

    DST is TRWTF.

  • (nodebb)

    Stay hopeful Ellis! If they've done their job right, then "Eastern" might just take care of the time changes for you. It's not clear why they would have "EST" as an option, especially without a matching "EDT", but if "Eastern" is the equivalent of "ET" ("Eastern time")--and if they've programmed it correctly--then this could be one of those nice set-and-forget situations.

  • (nodebb)

    This post reminds me that I'm soon going to have to change the clock on my microwave oven that was made back in 2012... (No, it's not an IoT microwave. Geez. It's a microwave oven, so why does anyone think it might need to talk to anything except itself...)

  • matt (unregistered) in reply to jkshapiro

    Yeah, don't be surprised if you set it to EST and get EST. (Then again, don't be surprised if you don't. It depends on whether the programmer is right too!) People often, incorrectly, think the phrase Eastern Standard Time applies year-round, but it's the unadjusted time that Eastern Daylight Time is an hour ahead of. Eastern Time, the one DST-using regions speak in, is the one that includes the adjustments when necessary. But Ellis, watch those dangling participles. The options didn't open the dropdown menu!

  • (nodebb)

    It's entirely likely that you have to fix this in their app on your phone.

  • (nodebb)

    I have a very expensive gas range at home. One of the features it has is app connectivity (I did not buy this appliance because it had this feature, I bought it because we were hosting Thanksgiving that year and it has a good quality double-oven, and plenty of stovetop space). There are a few moderately neat things the app can do, like give me an alert when the oven comes up to the set temp.

    However, the most annoying thing is that the clock on the range has to be set manually. The device is connected to the Internet, so it should be trivial to do. Not only does the clock not set itself, but setting the clock isn't one of the features the app offers. So, my very expensive "smart appliance" still requires me to do a ridiculous button dance twice a year to keep the clock correct.

  • (nodebb)

    I think (hope?) @jkshapiro is right about "Eastern" -- covering both EST and EDT and handling the switching between them, with EST provided for anyone who needs to lock into EST. In Arizona, I have the opposite issue -- we don't do DST, we're MST all year round, which effectively means MST in the winter and PDT in the summer. Had a cheap digital alarm clock that set itself off the radio time broadcasts, and I had to manually change timezones between MT and PT. Most decent computer/appliance systems have an "Arizona" option. Newer clocks still just have the few timezones, but add a separate DST toggle, and that's good enough for me.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Steve_The_Cynic

    For the most part I agree that most of my kitchen (and the rest of the house, for that matter) really doesn't need to be talking to anyone. On the flip side, a friend of mine had Gemini plan/organize Thanksgiving dinner and coordinate with Alexa to execute it, including controlling his oven and it worked out really well.

  • (nodebb)

    I once had a clock that did automatic DST adjustment. It would set the clock back one hour on the last Sunday in April and forward on the last Sunday in October.

    Then 2007 came. Then I had to change the time forward an hour on the last Sunday in October, then forward again on the first Sunday in November, then forward on the second Sunday in March, and back again on the first Sunday in April because the clock changed its time at the old days instead of the new days.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Llarry

    and coordinate with Alexa to execute it

    The only way my app can start the oven is if I set up the oven to "remote start" on the keypad first. Alexa integration would actually require slightly more work than simply using Alexa as a timer.

  • Infrastructure Decade (unregistered)

    I'm one of those people trying to 'do it right' when it comes to timezones and my pointy-haired-boss is like "Just hardcode a 5 hour offset from UTC. When winter rolls around, we'll update the software to be 6 hours. It's easy!" The correct fix using the tzdata would take, I dunno, maybe 7 days to implement and test.

    This project is a major piece of US transportation infrastructure. Sigh...

  • Chronistovore (unregistered) in reply to Brian

    I still have one of those clock with the old time change rules! Twice a year, on a seemingly random Sunday, it will be an hour off.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Llarry

    In Arizona, I have the opposite issue -- we don't do DST, we're MST all year round,

    Except for the parts that do (an enclave), and then the parts inside that that don't again (a nested enclave).

  • Stuart (unregistered)

    I am now reminded of a fun little bug I find in my EV charger. It has a lovely ability to schedule a charge, where I can tell it to start charging at a time of my choice, stopping at a time of my choice, at a current (amperage) of my choice. This ties in very nicely with my energy provider: there are a few providers in Australia that provide free electricity between 11am and 2pm, so I can set the schedule and away it goes.

    Until the fifth of October, when daylight robbery started, and I found that the EV charger hadn't applied the time change.

    The rest of the system is fine, the rest of the system recognised the timezone change - it was just the EV charger.

    The manufacturer promised that this will be fixed in the next firmware update. I was offered the beta firmware some months ago; I declined on the basis that I have a workaround for now, and I expect the final firmware to be released before it becomes a problem again.

    Now here we are at the tail end of March, with daylight robbery about to come to an end, and there's no sign of the firmware update coming through. Sigh.

    Can we just get rid of the time change? I'd prefer it to be regular time all year, but I'd take DST all year round if it meant not having to deal with the time change twice a year.

  • erffrfez (unregistered)

    Daylight saving??? I'd be more in favour if we could also do the related daylight spending. Save it in summer, spend it in winter.

  • 516052 (unregistered)

    DST is one of the most terrible abominations human kind has come up with. Its one and only purpose is to make the part of the year when you leave the office and its already dark come sooner and last longer. And that part of the year is just pure depression. It makes you feel like your whole day is lost.

  • Alister (unregistered)

    Is it worth mentioning at this stage that any device that requires an internet connection to operate is BROKEN by design

  • Toby (unregistered)

    My car has FM and DAB radio receiver, and GPS - three possible sources of time data. I believe that if you have a mobile phone, you can also connect it to the Internet, making NTP a fourth potential source. Yet the dashboard clock is updated by none of those, and slowly drifts until the next DST change when I set off somewhere and panic about my arrival time. Even my solar-powered wristwatch with its tiny energy budget manages to receive the Anthorn time signal and set itself correctly all year round.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Stuart

    Now you have me curious... According to my EV charger's app, it has been dutifully starting the charging at 12:05 AM, just after the special overnight EV charging rates kick in. But I have no idea what time the charger thinks it is. Fortunately, since we in the opposite hemisphere are entering DST, if the charger is still on standard time, it is starting at 1:05 AM which is still fine as I don't usually require the full charging window.

    I could set an alarm to check the car's app at 12:30 AM or so, but I am not that curious.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Toby

    My first GPS connected car was a 2012 Prius, so I've been through lots of DST changes (and clock adjustments) that could have been handled through the GPS signal. But I remembered how many roads I drive on briefly enter (and exit) a neighboring US state, sometimes many times in a short distance. I don't live near a TZ boundary, but I can imagine being driven crazy if my car's clock kept flipping back and forth.

  • anon (unregistered)

    Many years ago, we went with the hype and bought a Nest smart thermostat, replacing the old dumb one. This new one claimed to learn from our usage patterns and adjust the temperature automatically.

    Then one day it felt too warm, so I when to the thermostat and lowered the temperature.

    Minutes later, still too warm.

    I checked the thermostat history. Shortly after I lowered the temperature, the "smart learning" algorithm decided it was the right moment to raise it again.

    That is not a smart device. That's a stupid and stubborn device. I disabled that "automatic learning" feature immediately.

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