Here I have a car that can tell me how and where to go, take voice commands, but is unable to set the clock for going on and off daylight savings time! Even my stupid VCR can do this. Should I install it in the glove compartment?
I thought about this... Now, if you have a package BC (#9) and it has GPS technology...shouldn't it always have the right time and date? I was sorta hoping that it would automatically update the simple clock in front. Maybe in the next revision...
Well, the ideal would be for it to use the GPS to automatically adjust the 'local time' as you drive along, across time zones and between Daylight Saving Time areas.
Agreed about using GPS to calibrate the time. I was kinda pissed that my Sprint phone didn't automatically change Sunday morning since it does when I'm traveling automatically. I had to reboot the stupid thing. I don't remember having to do that in the past.
All, no system can be set to local time without manual input of your "observed" offset. Not just states, but localities (cities, indian tribes, etc) decide timezone, offset, and Daylight Saving Time (Yes, it is singular). Theoretically, this is possible with GPS, but the DVD would have to contain the list where the lines were between localities for all factors. This, too, can change every time a local law changes. So the real question is, when should the system access the DVD to look up the Time Zone? Every 15 seconds? Every day? Every hour? The best overall solution would be to program a computer to sync UTC (the baseline) time with GPS (which is off by 13 seconds anyway) http://www.seis.com.au/TechNotes/TN199901A...1A_GPS_UTC.html and then reference a "location" inputted manually. (Like on your windows computer). If more leap seconds were added to UTC, then the Prius NAV computer would have to be reprogrammed, and every time a change was made in a locality, a new DVD would be needed... Nate
While the concerns expressed by Nate are all valid, the reality is that a car that got the time changes right 99% of the time and had a manual override would be preferable, even if it didn't do the right thing when you're on certain indian reservations or cities with "forward thinking" mayors. The DVD wouldn't have to be accessed every time the time is computed; The system could store in memory the distance to the closest timezone boundary when it accesses the DVD and only check again when you have driven that far. If the clock system sampled the GPS location every 10 minutes while the car was turned on, I'm sure that would result in miniscule processor overhead and would satisfy most people's needs. For areas where the historical DVD timezone info is incorrect, you could just turn off automatic time, or you could enter a manual adjustment, and perhaps a circle of influence (e.g. "use this adjustment within 20 miles of the current location"). My coworkers love to make fun of the Infiniti commercials where they advertise how great it is that their clocks are visible to all passengers. If that can be a marketing advantage, then surely self-setting clocks would be a marketing homerun.
Guys, get over it. This was the easiest clock to set in a car that I have ever had. On my Subaru, I had to go to the manual everytime because there was a combination of buttons that had to be pressed to change the time. This was a cake walk!
The reason a cell phone changes time is that it gets it's time signal from the antennas. As noted, a GPS unit could figure it out, but it would have to know where DST was observed and if you have ever looked at an atlas of the US that has time zones, you'll see those lines are neither straight nor along a longitude line. There would be a LOT of data points. The best way would be to do it as your computer does - a user selectable "I observe DST" and a calendar/clock. Even if they expect it to work for 30 years, that is only 60 entries in the DST starts/ends 'database'.
Exactly. The primary rule to usability/user interface design that I try to follow is Alan Kay's: Setting the clock is a simple thing.
Bring this old thread back to life for this year's DST reminder So for people living in the States which observe DST: In 2008, daylight time begins on March 9 and ends on November 2. Wow, that will be this coming weekend.....got to spring forward 1 hour.
This year in South Australia we are having an extra week of daylight saving and next summer we will get an extra 2 weeks as we will move to daylight saving a week earlier and end a week later from now on!
Here in the states we're doing something similar: I think it's almost a month earlier this year than last, and ends a week later. This is occurring amid reports that these clock changes don't actually save any energy, by the way.
