Many ham radio operators typically have one or more clocks in their radio room (also known as a Ham Shack). These clocks are used to log contacts, time nets, or help the operator be aware of times in different timezones around the world. These clocks can take many forms, from one or more simple analog or digital clocks hung on the wall, to elaborate full world time displays on very large screens.
I wanted to create a time display for my needs that would not require any additional hardware. The desired features are:
- Display time in 12Hr or 24Hr format.
- Display a single oversized clock in local or other time zone.
- Display multiple clocks in different time zones simultaneously.
- The clock needed to be GPS disciplined so that it would display the correct time no matter how far off the viewer’s clock was.
- Required no special software to install.
The clock is open source and I have published it on Github. For those who wish to tinker, you can feel free to clone the repo, and install the clock on your own server. This is not necessary to use the clock however. Using the clock only requires a web browser on an internet connected machine, and is really simple to use.
If you only want to use the clock for your own radio room, lab, or other need, you can simply point your browser at any of the following URLs:
https://clock.wizworks.net
(This will display UTC time in 12Hr format)
https://clock.wizworks.net/?offset=-5
(This will display 12Hr formatted eastern standard time)
https://clock.wizworks.net/multi.htm
(This will display 12Hr formatted multi-zone time with multiple clocks) You can save the multi.htm file and modify it to display any desired zone,city, and times you wish. More on that later.
For 24Hr formatted time, just add “24h” to the path on the URLs above like this for each clock type:
https://clock.wizworks.net/24h/?offset=-5
If you wish to modify the multi.htm file (after saving to disk locally), you can change the clock titles by editing the H2 tags in the page source, and changing the URLs for each clock in the page code in each iframe src: (you can then locally open this file in a browser to display your customized multi-zone clock dashboard)
FINAL NOTE:
At the time of this writing, there is a problem with iOS devices rendering the clock properly. There is no issue with desktop or android browsers, and the clock works as expected. This is a work in progress and I hope to fix this iOS bug, but for now, enjoy the clock in your favorite browser on the desktop, raspberry pi, or android device.
For really cool results, you can put this to run on a raspberry pi in kiosk and auto-start mode and display it on a large screen in your environment, or run it in a separate window and drag it to a secondary or tertiary screen.
