Remote controller for Clocks (IKEA and others, DCF77, WWVB, MSF, JJY)
A remotely controlled, precise analog wall clock like that one from IKEA is a cool thing. Today we will build our own remote control for such analog and digital clocks. All we need is a Raspberry Pi and a few electronic components. And we will learn something about resonance frequencies, capacitors, and ferrite antennas. Let’s hack!
This is material presented in the following video:
Installation:
Source of the software: https://github.com/hzeller/txtempus
sudo apt-get install git build-essential -y git clone https://github.com/hzeller/txtempus.git cd txtempus make
Start command:
sudo ./txtempus -v -s DCF77
Options:
-s <service> : Service; one of 'DCF77', 'WWVB', 'JJY40', 'JJY60', 'MSF'
-r <minutes> : Run for limited number of minutes. (default: no limit)
-t 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM' : Transmit the given local time (default: now)
-z <minutes> : Transmit the time offset from local (default: 0 minutes)
-v : Verbose.
-n : Dryrun, only showing modulation envelope.
-h : This help.
Automatic Startup:
Create a service file for systemd:
Create a service file:
sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/remoteClock.service
Insert the following content:
[Unit]
Description=My Sample Service
After=multi-user.target
[Service]
Type=idle
ExecStart=/home/pi/txtempus/txtempus -v -s DCF77 > /home/pi/remoteClock.log 2>&1
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Press ctrl-X , Y and Enter to save the file
Set the permission:
sudo chmod 644 /lib/systemd/system/remoteClock.service
Restart systemd
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable remoteClock.service
sudo reboot