Trouble With G-Shock Wave Ceptor and DST Change
At 2 a.m. this morning Daylight Savings Time (DST) ended in the USA, and we set our clocks back one hour. Unfortunately, my Casio Wave Ceptor didn’t synchronize today with the atomic clock radio signal out of Fort Collins, Colorado. So it’s running an hour fast. My G-Shock reads 7:09 p.m., but it’s really 6:09 p.m. (right). The last time my watch synced was Nov. 3 at 5:03 a.m., the day before DST ended (left).
An interesting note — DST lasted a week longer this year, reportedly because the candy industry lobbied the US Congress to extend it past Oct. 31.
It’ll be a treat for me when my G-Shock catches the atomic clock signal again and it resets to the correct time.
November 5th, 2007 at 6:03 am
Hi Bryan,
I didn’t know DST was prolonged in the US. Now it makes sense I saw several reports of G’s that did not turn of DST on the G-Shock forum.
We happen to have a local Halloween night recently, although the DST has ended already a week ago here. Getting a bit off topic: Actually I can see why there are 4 times more deaths on childrens pedestrians on Halloween night. The kids, specially the youngest ones, are so excited, that they run across streets when you least expect it. I’m glad everything here ended without accidents here.
You have a nice Waveceptor model. The father of Mr Yamazaru-San (a.k.a. “Risefreak”) actually has the same model.
Cheers,
Sjors
November 5th, 2007 at 6:14 am
Bryan, for the past two changes, I’ve noticed that my Casio waveceptors don’t sync up properly to the DST changes on the first day. These watches usually sync 9 out of ten days, but twice in a row now, none of them caught the last DST changes. Today, they are fine. I wonder if it’s coincidence or if there is a real technical reason?
November 5th, 2007 at 8:06 am
As a data point, my White Silencer (GW410TCJ-7) actually picks up the DST change this Monday morning automatically. The time was off on Sunday, but I figured that is because it synced at midnight and the DST changes at 2AM. I don’t know if this is should be considered a bug or not since the watch did sync to the correct time when it initiates the sync…
Maybe Casio should consider syncing at 4AM instead in the future.
November 5th, 2007 at 9:26 am
All eleven of my atomic clock Casios caught the signal and made the change. My new Citizen 5-band didn’t, but the fault was mine, not the watch, as I had forgotten to turn on the automatic adjustment. Nice not to need to reset some of the watches. Cheers,
don
November 5th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Hi all,
Sjors — You have DST in Holland too? I didn’t know that. Hey, great costume your son wore!
Petew — Maybe it’s inconsistent for us because we live far from Colorado?
Maverick Woo & Don — Nice your Casios changed, that’s really fun, isn’t it? Mine has synced on the day of the changeover in the past, but still hasn’t reset this time. I’ll set it near a window before bed tonight and see if it will sync tomorrow morning.
Regards,
Bryan
November 6th, 2007 at 5:57 am
Hi Bryan,
I have to correct something. The picture is the first photo I took at the local halloween feast.
November 6th, 2007 at 6:42 am
Hi Sjors,
Oh, my mistake. I’d assumed that was your son. Hard to tell with all that makeup on! Thanks for correcting that, and for including the link.
Update — My GW-900 caught the wave this morning (Nov. 6), so it’s now in sync. Always a feeling of satisfaction when I look at it and see it’s synced and correct.
Bryan
November 6th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
My “Darth” Wave Ceptor changed over just fine. However yesterday it missed syncing. It’s been pretty solid for the most part.
November 12th, 2007 at 4:02 am
Hello,
Synchronizing a clock to radio time may be difficult, even more with a wristwatch:
- antenna is a small one, small enough to be put in a watch case; at the opposite, if you have a radio clock board for your PC, you will note that the antenna is a few centimeters long and 5-6 mm diameter ferrite cylinder!
- even if you are in the theoretical receiving zone, you might not receive well the signal (you are in the bottom of a valley, a mountain or a building hides the signal…);
- watches do few attempts (1 per day for old ones, 6-10 attempts per day for recent ones) to synchronize; and if you read carefully the documentation, you should note that watch should not be moving, and stay correctly oriented towards the emitter.
My son had a Casio wave ceptor, years ago. And it almost never suceeded in synchronizing, although in Nice (France) we are theoretically in the zone of Manheim (Germany) emitter.
Should we use watches with an extra external 10 cm long antenna?
Best regards,
MikeNovember