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Show HN: Clocksimulator.com – A minimalist, distraction-free analog clock

78 pointsby user_timotoday at 2:17 PM70 commentsview on HN

Hello all! Build clean, minimalistic analog clock webpage to Cloudflare Pages.

This is for (maybe): - kids to learn - for second monitor - old tabled on shelf - ..

Themes and screen wake lock buttons with auto-hide. Goal is to keep it as clean as possible.

This possible makes no sense, but for a domain of $10/y this is cheap site for me to keep and see how it lives on.


Comments

andaitoday at 3:18 PM

I built a digital clock for my neighbor with Alzheimer a few years ago. It was a web app with an analog clock and it would show Morning / Afternoon / Evening / Night on the side.

I felt quite proud of myself, since she often got confused about whether it was 6am or 6pm on her analog clocks at home. (Alzheimer's can bring a loss of the sense of time.)

But while she thought it was a great idea, every time I came back, she had turned off the dedicated tablet we set up for the purpose

I ended up just buying her an Alzheimer's clock — a 24 hour clock with pictures indicating the time of day, for $15 or so. That one stayed where we put it!

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eltetotoday at 2:40 PM

Very clean and polished! I love how smooth the seconds hand move.

I work in an environment where we look at the time across many different timezones around the world. A couple of feature requests if you are ever in the mood:

  1. Make it possible to specify the timezone.
  2. Make it possible to create a grid of clocks, each with different timezones.
  3. Persist the grid/timezone state in the URL so links can be easily shared.
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agentifyshtoday at 8:57 PM

This is actually pretty cool. It's just a clock, nothing more, nothing less. Animations are smooth. I actually prefer these analogue clocks over digital as I seem to be able to plan ahead better with it.

signalmassetoday at 3:10 PM

Love the correct time in the favicon. Nice touch.

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vunderbatoday at 4:50 PM

Nice job. Consider adding a option to turn on a "tick sound" as the second hand moves.

Also maybe see if you can get yours linked to clockfaceonline.co.uk

They have a bunch of analog clock visualizations. I particularly like the magical themed one:

https://www.clockfaceonline.co.uk/clocks/magical

https://www.clockfaceonline.co.uk/analogue-clocks.php

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matthovatoday at 3:44 PM

Love how clean it looks.

Related, I made a clock with a moire pattern (10 years ago now) and still love coming back to it.

The hands all spin with css transitions and I remember there was a Safari bug where if I zoomed in, the rotation would reset itself

https://psychedelic-clock.surge.sh

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sirbranedamujtoday at 2:50 PM

I appreciate the straightforwardness of this. If I could make one request, it would be to support more of a "tick" mode instead of the continuous second hand motion. It doesn't even have to actually make noises, I just like the visuals of the clock hand starting and stopping every second. I don't know if there's a more formal name for this in Clock World

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qwertfischtoday at 2:50 PM

Can you set it to ticks instead of continuous running of the seconds clockhand That would be great. The vast majority of analog clocks have a ticking clockhand for the seconds, if any at all (can you make the seconds optional?).

The only clocks I know of with such a motor are station clocks, like the Swiss one mentioned already, or the German variant (same manufacturer). But these have a twist: the minute clockhand does not run continuously, but also ticks. The seconds are running a little bit faster until the clockhand is in the upper position, then waits for a signal from the main clock. Only then the minute clockhand jumps one minute and the seconds are starting again.

An example can be seen here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnhofsuhr#Technik

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dbacartoday at 3:20 PM

Excellent, maybe an addition for protection from display burn-in would be nice. I dont know. Congrats.

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o_enix_otoday at 4:28 PM

Beautiful! One small thing on the iPhone using Safari; it would be nice to have the clock vertically centered. Now it’s near the bottom half of the screen. Looking great otherwise!

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lioeterstoday at 2:49 PM

I like it. Simple, well-designed, smooth. It's nice everything fits in a single HTML page with no external dependencies. The inline style and script is human readable, which is becoming rare these days.

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kipdotcomtoday at 3:12 PM

May I suggest that we keep it as clean as it now, and maybe have something like the domain `/advanced` for those who want more features? (If OP has time to implement them)

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xeortoday at 3:58 PM

This is something I vibecoded to learn my kid the clock. I think this is a very good use of ai coding, stuff that is for visualization and temporary learning.

https://utforsk.github.io/clockeroo/

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lowleveltoday at 4:26 PM

I laughed, but then I saw the l. Nice job though...

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Faaaktoday at 2:30 PM

Somehow related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock

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qwertfischtoday at 2:53 PM

The PTB (national metrology institute of Germany) provides a similar clock for decades. It is one of the few displaying the real time, not your computer’s time. The difference (if any) can be shown.

There is also a time announcement if needed.

https://uhr.ptb.de/

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alcazartoday at 2:20 PM

Kudos. It really is clean. And the domain name is easy to remember.

If I use any analog clock simulator in the future, it will be yours.

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natpalmer1776today at 2:35 PM

This looks really clean, excellent job!

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Implement7347today at 4:01 PM

Pretty cool idea, i wish it had that nostalgic ticking sound of seconds.

user_timotoday at 2:21 PM

It takes current time from client browser and shows it. No adjustments or alarms.

bayindirhtoday at 2:34 PM

Looks really neat. I used to use a very similar screensaver back in the day.

Kudos.

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noman-landtoday at 2:46 PM

Very smooth. Is the code open source?

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user_timotoday at 5:06 PM

iframe support added, can be found under Info button.

jannniiitoday at 3:10 PM

Very nice!!

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insane_dreamertoday at 6:37 PM

Very nice. My only suggestion would be to slightly differentiate more the hour and minute hands (so that at a quick glance, someone, perhaps even a child) can immediately distinguish between them. (i.e., hour hand slightly shorter/fatter)

jdauriemmatoday at 2:27 PM

Better than 90% of the slop that gets ladled into the front page, bravo. The world needs more Clock Simulator-like projects.

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nikolas_sapatoday at 3:00 PM

wow bro. how did you even come up with the idea. I also like the fact that there is a toggle that you can switch if you want screen on. pretty smart

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