[tz] Beginner's help request

[Daniel Ford]

Bradley,

"Why do you believe that your clock requires new mechanisms?"

That's a valid question!  I'm not sure that I'm looking for a 'new mechanism', but rather a simple way of doing the same thing (on the NodeMCU platform) those billions of devices do, without any 'incremental' ongoing costs.  By that I mean no additional costs over the data plan the user currently has for their wi-fi Internet connection.

Your next question might then be: "If they have an Internet connection, why can't they just look at their PC/smartphone/whatever for the current time?"  I'm going to tell you why *I* want such a clock, and I'm assuming I'm not the only person in the world in this situation (if I am, then it's going to be a very short production run! ;-)

I'm sitting in my living room watching TV.  A show that I want to watch more than the one I'm currently watching starts on another channel at 9pm.  I need to know when the time approaches 9pm.  My PC is downstairs in my home-office, so I'm not running down there to find the time.  I might or might-not have a smartphone in my pocket, but even if I did, what a drag to have to pull it out and press a button just to see the current time.  Much easier to just glance across at the table/wall clock to see the current time.

This is a very trivial example, but illustrates the type of problem I'm trying to solve.  There would be lots of people (particularly elderly people) without a smartphone, but with an Internet connected PC, though not in their living room/bedroom/kitchen/wherever they want to know the time.

Regards,
Daniel