NTP Clock

Another great club project organized by Dino VE7NX and rightly described by Blake Wiggs VA7BWG as “a thing of beauty”. In March 2026, twenty five NTP clocks were constructed by SARC members for use in their ham shacks, based on the work of Bruce Hall W8BH, a prolific designer of ham radio accessories – see Amateur Radio Station W8BH for more. 3D printed cases were prepared and made available to the group by Andrew Elgin VA7LGN.

NTP stands for network time protocol. In contrast to the previous GPS clock project, this one obtains its time from an Internet time standard rather than satellite by GPS, as more fully explained along with technical details on Bruce’s website:

https://w8bh.net/NTP_DualClock.pdf and NTP Clock - Builders Guide.

At the heart of the project is the 32 bit microcontroller with WiFi capability. For the new version of the clock, Bruce implemented the WiFi manager that allows the user to change the SSID and password from their phone and thereby provide flexibility should Internet providers be changed or the user move to a new location.

The clock kept the original split display with 12 hour display for local time and 24 hour style for UTC time. Dino had to modify the code to accommodate BC daylight saving time . Once the clock is programmed it connects to the internet server and obtains the time from the atomic clock.