Original thread from my old forums
How many times do you walk into a room and notice that the clock is just a little out of sync with your watch, which is a little out of sync with the microwave, which is a little out of sync with the VCR, which is perfectly in sync with your computer, but they are both out of sync with reality?
I hate that. I also hate having to reset clocks when the power goes out, that is why I suggest we actually use this “we-should-make-computers-out-of-everything-that-is-sold” mentality for something good. Everything should have a little RF transmitter/receiver that signals its time and the last time is was synced from a good source.
The actual protocal isn’t really that different from say standard NTP. Timepieces sync themselves and then allow others to sync from them. The longer they go without syncing to a low weighted server the higher their weight becomes and the less likely they are to let others sync from them, but the more likely they are to get sync’ed from something else.
Think about it, you walk into a room carrying your cell phone and your watch. Your cell phone is sync’ed off of the cell network, which is sync’ed from internet time servers, so it has a fairly low weight. Your watch has a low weight as well, but it must be higher than the cell phone because chances are it was sync’ed from it. In the room is a clock and a microwave. Both of them would have higher weights than the cell phone since they aren’t directly connected to anything so therefore they would pull the correct time off of it and adjust their weight. Then suppose you set your cell phone down in another room and replace the battery on your watch. It now has the highest weight possible and the microwave or clock will set it to their time. Then once you get in range of your cell phone if their is a difference in the time it will adjust accordingly. Think about that, if your power goes out, all you have to do to set your clocks is walk through your house, or it could be a ripple effect. Your computer sets all the clocks in range of it, they then set all the time pieces within range of them and so on and so forth until everything is set and sync’ed. Since it would be a time that is based off of GMT with a modification, it shouldn’t have too much effect when you are near someone from a different time zone. The GMT time will sync, but the mods will make it so that they aren’t shifting from 9 to 10 then back to 9 over and over.