Agora Clock | Hacker News Reader

Agora Clock

tindie.com

53 pointsBondi_Blue36 comments

HN when big tech releases some uninspired new feature: "Amazing, life changing!"

HN when an individual makes something and sells it: "Here's why it's shit and I actually hate it"

It's even more ridiculous since this is a project being sold on Tindie, a website for people to sell their small time electronic hobby projects.

This a culture that HN can’t seem to shake off. It’s almost stereotypical.

I know more and more techies who hate this community because of it.

I hate the community, so I'm one of those folks. I stay here because occasionally something interesting pops up and because I have literally nothing else to do.

It's pretty cool, I'll say that, but it appears to be out of stock anyway. And why not be able to say what I really think? Honest feedback (when delivered politely) should be helpful to a creator, as long as it's not just piling on. $68 seems like quite a bit, to be honest.

It's a link to a shop page. Most of us have never heard of Tindie. It is not clear that it's made by an individual.

What did you expect?

Give us literally anything to talk about. A picture of an alarm clock on a store page and a price tag, is going to get discussion about what people like in alarm clocks.

This is how to generate positive discussion about your alarm clock product on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25902165

Has a blog post with an interesting concept. There's something to talk about.

He gets positive feedback, people encourage him to start a kickstarter.

Agolia has examples, literally alarm clocks made by individuals.

Ya'll salty for no reason.

Actually, most of comments in this thread are not attacking the maker, nor the clock, and are discussing things neutrally. There are just three posts criticizing particular details -- battery life, font and 3D-printed enclosure. Maybe this looks very different to new iPhone announcements, but I don't read those at all.

I don't understand why in the age of dirt cheap Espressif modules people keep doing DIY clocks with micros that don't have WiFi for S/NTP. It's the same with a lot of the expensive nixie clocks. At least throw in an RTC!

At the other end of the (colourfulness) spectrum the Ulanzi TC-001 and the awtrix-light firmware makes for a great visually fun clock that can also do notifications and various other stuff.

For keeping time I would pick DCF77 and its worldwide equivalent over WiFi.

IoT gadgets that don't have a flexible input mechanism require setting up the network via convoluted steps. Also every device with WiFi has an expiry date attached to it: at some point standards evolve, encryption schemes get phased out... Not worth it for a clock in my opinion.

DCF77 on the other hand requires no configuration, can be expected to work basically forever and will never be part of a botnet.

There isn’t a (single) worldwide equivalent of DCF77, because the radio signals have limited propagation and they are tied to a specific time zone. If you are in North America there isn’t a signal per timezone, so you have to configure your clock’s offset. For me in Cambridge there isn’t very good reception of MSF during the day, so I have to wait for night time if I want to reset my radio clocks.

Have you tried this DCF77 Emulator app?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.houryo.dcf7...

Haven't taken the time to do it myself but it was from HN that I learned about it.

Good point - are there any low cost or at least widely available integrated IC receivers? There's the MAS6180C but that doesn't seem to be commonly available at any of the big distributors. GPS works, but then your clock needs to be near a window and needs some way of being updated for local tzinfo changes.

I probably wouldn't buy a clock so my view is completely unnecessary but I have to say the font puts me off. Especially the 3

It could have a number of alternative fonts built in, assuming the developer wants to give you the choice.

I'm actually shopping on the usual sites for an old-school red-LED clock that isn't too bright, so I can roll over late at night and see the time without waking up much. (My Pixel 6 Pro with GrapheneOS has a very nice and dim clock display, but I want to take the phone out of my room and put it in a different room, so that I'm not tempted to pick it up and start checking things.)

Maybe even one that actually receives (wait for it) .. radio.

People sell these used (or give them away) all the time.

I still have mine from 1991. I wish it showed 24-hour time but other than that it's great.

If you haven’t, check thrift stores and Goodwill’s auction site - I feel like I see red LED radio clocks in-store all the time.

> The body is printed on 3D printer with textured bed which brings interesting finish to the surfaces

if they could instead put this in a slimmer case, maybe something aluminum or otherwise non-diy-looking, that would be great for their value prop.

I think epaper works in a similar way to lcd, ie appplying an electric field across some kind of reactive layer - polarizing liquid crystals, tiny charged colored spheres, etc?

I only ever see high-resolution epaper matrices, but in principle I think you should be able to have much simpler epaper segment displays and so on, just like for lcds. Is there some reason this is not a thing?

For this clock, cool as it is, lack of a backlight seems to limit it to being a desk clock. I can see a larger epaper display working well as a wall clock, but it would have to be much cheaper than a full high-resolution matrix display, hence my comment above.

> I only ever see high-resolution epaper matrices, but in principle I think you should be able to have much simpler epaper segment displays and so on, just like for lcds. Is there some reason this is not a thing?

This is a thing.

At home I have a couple Xiaomi "LYWSD02MMC" clocks that use e-paper segment displays. They also broadcast temperature and humidity over BLE and last a bit more than a year on two coin cells, and look (to me) much nicer than the Agora clock, they are much slimmer (about half a centimeter deep and with a smaller bezel).

They are proprietary and very much closed though (although you can control them without proprietary apps, at least).

Edit a few similar devices can run an alternative, open firmware and here's info on the eink segment display of one of them if you're curious: https://github.com/znanev/MHO-C401

I would love an e-ink/e-paper display on this style of alarm clock.

https://reverb.com/au/item/58940051-sony-dream-machine-icf-c...

A generic cube/rectangle shaped alarm clock does not appeal to me. Your hand is going to be thwacking or pressing buttons in a daze...

Something that is strong, with no sharp edges and finger wells on (or around) buttons, really helps me imagine using the clock.

People who 3d print stuff seem to forget that filament printed enclosures don't look good, and certainly aren't nice enough to sell.

Thet definitely can look good if you know what you're doing.

It takes a lot of work to fill in the striations, prime, paint... Better to start with a process that produces a nicer product to start with, like SLA if you Absolutely Must 3D Print an Enclosure

Agree. CNC aluminum or wood, even acrylic, even for just the front face, would be a lot nicer too.

Some of the offshore machining services are surprisingly affordable for low qty enclosures, especially if you can commit to at least an intermediate quantity > 100 and have reasonably good DFM.

I sort of agree although the prospective buyer here may not be very design-focused.

I wonder quantities they're building. IMO the steps up to take would be SLA (which can look really nice with post processing), or for higher volumes urethane casting, or once you hit a thousand units actually having a metal tool made.

They are definitely "nice enough" to sell on Tindie given the purpose of the platform.

I'm... not seeing the added value, it's not particularly attractive, it lacks features (like a backlight, multiple alarms), the 15:25 time is wonky and looks like it was edited, the menu is basic and not very well designed, etc. Someone's trying to sell their at home IoT project but didn't spend the time to add value.

Like the idea, but e-ink display makes it far from minimalistic. Had it been an LCD display (either with digits, or dot matrix), that would be electro punky. And it can be driven with ATTiny instead of -Mega.

OTOH, their wristwatch, with same clumsy font, looks good -- especially when every macho wears with a big waker clock on his wrist.

Looks like a Playdate (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playdate_(console)).

Exactly what I thought - that and Teenage Engineering’s POM-400

It's sad that "1 year battery life" is an advertised thing for a clock.

I just replaced the batteries for the first time on an LCD clock I got decades ago.

> micro-USB connector for charging

When will this die?

Yes, one can easily build this.

I thought this was going to be a new kind of logical clock I didn't know about. I'm devastated.

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