@kitten How stable is the power grid in your area? I've heard some appliances use the AC frequency for clock speed, and if it's not stable they'll drift.
@erincandescent@kitten But it's not always exactly 50Hz, there's some tolerance. For most devices it doesn't matter if it's say 49.95Hz, but if it stays low for a while a device that bases its clock frequency on AC frequency will slowly drift.
@erincandescent@kitten True. A while ago (might've been a year or two) I read reports about that not quite working for a few months though. Haven't heard anything like that recently, but it came to mind with the clock being weirdly off.
@airtower@erincandescent@kitten the thing is that the tolerances are non-cumulative. For example, if the frequency is too low for a while, it should become too high for a while to compensate. The number of cycles over time should not drift.
@lunarood@airtower@kitten there were a few months a few years back where the entire grid ran slow (due to lack of generation in the Serbia/Kosovo area) and when they resolved the problem they still ran the grid fast for a few months to get everyones clocks back in sync
The most important part isn't really the momentary frequency, but rather the absolute number of cycles over time. Most AC equipment isn't narrowly tuned and can tolerate a decent range of frequencies. As long as the grid frequency is vaguely around nominal, everything works fine.
So there is a momentary frequency tolerance, to give some operational allowance, but the cumulative drift is required to be effectively zero.
@airtower@kitten honestly, it's really frustrating how many appliances are designed with a crappy oscillator for timekeeping, when a stable clock signal is right there already!
@kitten I'd say that rather sounds like a reason to host an NTP server! 😁
No need to connect your appliances to the internet that way. And if you get a little GPS, you can set up a stratum 1 server, so that you don't need internet at all!
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