DST change and home auto...

I've not seen this addressed here, and I just wonder if anyone has info on how the change in the start of DST this year will effect various HA systems.

In general, will folks in the nutty 48 states that still do DST be screwed for a few weeks or are fixes available?

I live in one of the states that doesn't "do" DST.....

I'm just curious as it won't effect me... MS seems to only be updating XP and Vista for the change, but I got a "developer" email from MS today that indicates new coding/testing might be needed at the application level in general!

Reply to
AZ Woody
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Reply to
BruceR

ElkRP software for Elk MIG and M1EZ8 has a built-in function that allows one to set whatever recurring dates/days are desired. The latest version of the remote software also has an option to update all the ELK M1G installations in a dealer/installer/maintainer's customer account database automatically.

... Marc Marc_F_Hult www.EC>> I've not seen this addressed here, and I just wonder if anyone has

Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

While not directly discussing HA systems, there is a site that talks about DST patching and fixes in general that may help explain options, especially if no DST patch is available from the vendor:

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At the very least it will help you make sure your computer is up to date.

Reply to
jr9

Unfortunately, it is glaringly wrong on one major point, saying that changing your PC time manually will not work. Windows has an option for automatic DST so changing the time manually and disabling automatic DST will work.

The simplest fix for pre-XT PCs is to disable automatic DST and use D4 (Dimension 4) to automatically update the time (using Internet timeservers) every few hours. With D4 you just need to make sure you set the max change high enough.

Any µC based hardware that has automatic DST should be upgradeable if there are ways to update the firmware. It's a very simple calculation.

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Reply to
Dave Houston

From: AZ Woody

A quick fix for most windows machines is to download tzedit from microsoft.

Reply to
Philip Lewis

W98Se has no patch. W98SE has the DST option. If you were referring to non-MS operating systems, you should have said so.

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Reply to
Dave Houston

There is a method to patch Windows 95, 98 and ME for DST. It is not a straight forward patch, but it is not too hard to do, either.

See

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Reply to
jr9

But it's harder than my earlier suggestion of disabling Automatic DST and using D4 to keep the clock synced with an NTP server - which has the added advantage of keeping the clock accurate year round.

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Reply to
Dave Houston

and requiring a network connection.

frankly, imho, anyone runnin WIN9x or WINme would be foolish to have it connected to external networks for many many security reasons.

Win9x is a great dos-with-GUI for handling automation or other tasks, it should no longer be considered an internet platform.

of course you could provide NTP services from WITHIN a private network. but that is overkill when patching once won't kill you.

-k

Reply to
ken

IMO there is no more reason to be concerned about a W98SE machine connected to a network than any other machine. All of my machines connect to the Internet through the same ADSL router, all are 100% stealthy according to "Shields Up" at grc.com, and all require permission before transmitting anything to the Internet.

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Reply to
Dave Houston

I wonder how much havoc this change will wreak compared to what it saves. Daylight savings only really works if people don't turn on the lights to compensate for the shift and work by "natural light." The problem is that they mostly just turn on the lights.

Shifting sunlight patterns on highways one whole hour leads to lots of serious accidents every time they make the shift. We elected these ninnies, too. Want to save a boatload of energy? Stop refereeing civil wars! Give more solar tax credits. Instead, they choose to screw up all the clocks. Yikes!

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

Actually, those older operating systems are relatively safe. Most virus protection / internet security companies report that almost no viruses, trojans, keyloggers, etc.. are being written that try to access the known problems in Win98 or lesser. It seems the hackers out there have bigger fish in mind. So, as long as you keep your virus protection software current, you'll more-than-likely find sailing to be smooth. (Never mind the fact that they systems are so antiquated that they can hardly do anything...)

On another note concerning the coming DST issues. I find it rather amusing that we in the programming community has been caught being lazy again. We thought Y2K would have taught us a lesson.

The N.I.S.T. time server (based upon the atomic clocks they run) has a pretty good system that allows for the moving of Daylight Savings time.

the following is an example of what you get when you hit their telnet server

54157 07-02-26 13:12:30 00 0 0 493.4 UTC(NIST) *

The double zero you see in the middle is a count down. When we get close to the day of DST changing, it begins counting down from 99 each day at 12:00am UTC. When it hits 50, we're in standard time. Likewise, in the fall, it beginns counting down from 50 until we hit

00 again. Then it's DST.

Instead of putting in our computer clocks things like 3rd Sunday in Oct. or whatnot, they should all just adopt this protocol. Then the powers-that-be can move the date around all they want.

Reply to
ohno

I wish I did. This morning I've awakened one hour early to find the master alarm (the ultra-smart and otherwise nice but time signal deaf, Emerson) had jumped ahead one hour along with the Samsung DVDR and a few other "DST"-smart items. I also noticed a few web sites like Zap2It were listing the wrong time as well. Thank you, Congress!!!

WARNING: Off-topic political (but non-partisan) screed follows: I liked them better when they were chasing and perhaps murdering interns (Condit/Levy) and debauching young pages instead of passing bonehead laws. Speaking of Congress, I heard an interesting lecture about why Phillip Morris is spearheading a campaign to have the FDA regulate smoking. Since they hold the largest share of the market, an advertising ban would simply "lock in" their huge slice of the market. The lecturer also said that Enron supported the Kyoto treaty because it would clearly raise the overall cost of energy. Since they worked on a percentage, it would have been very good for them in the long run had they not had other difficulties - like being common gutter thieves in silk suits that got caught red-handed.

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

I wonder... This morning one of my PDAs gave me a "Updated for Daylight Savings" notification. It had previously refused to let me set the proper time. Now it's right.

Reply to
E. Lee Dickinson

Well, this morning, my old JVC VCR continued to work ok and set the correct time from the Network Time Code as it had been doing since the start of daylight savings time several weeks ago. However, my newer DVR, which was working ok after the switch to CDT, this morning switched to 1 hour later than the actual time. On the actual start day of DST, the DVR time messed up, however, I believe that the local PBS station stopped sending time code for a day or 2. I was able to get it working until today. Unfortunately now the only way I've found to fix it is to set it for manual set time. I hope the internal clock keeps time. I know that many of these units have very poor internal clocks .... that's why they started using the network time code to set and keep the clock accurate. BTW, I sent an email to Panasonic (the DVR mfg.) and asked "what they were doing about it" when the problems 1st happened and before it magically fixed itself (or PBS fixed it). After a week, they answered saying they were backlogged and would reply in the future. So far no reply. They could provide a flash file for the internal firmware, but I don't think they really care!

BTW, the same goes for my Smarthome

1132CU controller. They said they were "looking at it!" I "fixed" it by setting a phony timezone for a city in the western part of Texas .... I am located in the central timezone (near Joliet, IL). In the fall, it will need to be switched back. Welcome back to the 1980s.
Reply to
Art Todesco

My guess is that it might need two more fixes. One when DST used to end and then again at the *new* end of DST. As you pointed out, it's complicated by whatever the PBS channel considers the right time. The sites that were out of synch the morning seem to have caught up. Fortunately both my PC (and my LaCrosse clock) seem to be set correctly - finally - thanks to David White who translated Microsoft's incomprehensible instructions into concise, simple English for human beings.

Now I have *five* clocks in my office. And they each seem to have gone their own way today.

One cheap RatShack with no DST brains, a DST-smart Emerson that can't 'hear' the radio time signals but obeys the old DST settings, a PC that gets its time from the Naval Observatory, a DVDR that gets its time information from Comcast and PBS, and the LaCrosse clock that is DST smart AND hears the radio time signal. The dumb Ratshack clock turned out to be the device that required the least tweaking. That might be the ultimate lesson from all this. There's something to be said for simple!

-- Bobby G.

Reply to
Robert Green

None of our clocks or watches or other time pieces required any 'tweaking' at all.

The clocks in the cars, ovens, and wristwatches and alarm clocks need to be set manually anyway.

So just like every other year for the past 1/2 century or so, on the Sunday 'they' told us to do it, we jist dun it -- no fuss, no muss.

All the computers including the HA server synchronized automagically over our home's local network thanks to MS W32Time service.

The only additional work was this post in comp.home.automation.

If there was a 'take-home' for me, it would be to reinforce the judgment that in these matters, either very dumb or very smart is better than sorta smart. As in the rest of life, it's often the stuff in between what's fixin to stir up the trouble.

"You got trouble Folks! Right here in [comp.home.automation]. Trouble with a Capital T ... that stands for {Time] ;-) ... Marc Marc_F_Hult

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Reply to
Marc_F_Hult

If only it were that simple...

I manage several networks running mostly XP pro all syncing to local Linux servers running NTP. The problem is that M$ in their wisdom allowed machines syncing to a LOCAL time server to calculate DST offsets at the machine level. This is madness. Depending on the patch level the time is either correct or off by 1 hour.

When I tested this back in February the desktop machine I used worked fine without the latest patches. Some of the machines on various networks did fine without the latest patches, but most did not.

I used WindowsXP-KB931836-x86-ENU.exe on any machines that had SP2 and tzedit.exe on the others to get the clocks right. Unfortunately these patches only correct the time not fix the root of the problem since the time offset is still calculated on the local machine. On a network all machines should sync to the time offered by their LOCAL NTP server if there is one. This would assure that all times were consistent across the local network. If the network was large enough to need time zone compensation then a time server should be designated for each local network (or time zone) for synchronization.

end of rant...

Reply to
Lewis Gardner

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