Borduhr «8 DAYS» Chronograph

Author: Simon Widmer

Preface

I am coding this clock just out of fun. The clock face design is fictitious as I do not plan to copy an existing clock. However, I was well inspired by some famous aircraft clock models mostly from the (pre-) Second World War. The following list does not claim to be exhaustive, but is intended to provide interested readers with information on historical aircraft dashboard clocks.

This clocks are masterpieces in engineering and design on its own. The readability of the clocks with the deep black dial is unsurpassed. All of them are labeled 8 DAYS, indicating that they could run for 8 days after winding it fully up. Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not a fan of war at all – I just like the aircraft clocks from that time.

Description

Measured on several platforms, the CPU-Load of Borduhr should remain below 2% – but mostly even below 1%. Another goal is to keep it scalable (resizing the window). This gave me a big headache but the result was worth it in my opinion. Why did I titled this clock «Borduhr – 8 DAYS»? Because I just could not think of a better, short name yet. Borduhr is the german term for aircraft dashboard clock.

Note that the label «SWISS MADE» of my «Borduhr» is correct indeed – I am living in the «clock-country» Switzerland and try to continue the art of designing clocks. It is just that this one is made out of pure software instead of gear wheels.

Borduhr «8 DAYS»

Installation

Pre-Requirements

Kindly note that there is no installation as such needed of running “Borduhr”. As it is coded in Tcl/Tk, of course one has to install the interpreter first.

Unzip Borduhr

Then unzip borduhr into your chosen destination and execute it.

Functions

The red pushbutton (red pusher) on bottom right is used for the chronograph and works as follows:

The black pushbutton button on bottom left is used as follows:

Features

Specialties

I have never liked the fact that the big second hand is part of the chronograph function instead of the smaller one (on my wristwatch) – so please forgive me but I’ve exchanged those functions. In my opinion, this design makes it easy to distinguish the main watch from the stopwatch.

I thought that it would be a cool function to add not only a long day-hand but also a smaller month hand. You will get used to it soon. Still, I don’t know how to display the year in a cooler analog way. Maybe I can find a solution while having a look at the perpetual watches that are around.

Note that the numbers containing a 1 on the clockface is in fact a (sans-serif) I as lots of clock of that time. Due to the fact that I could not find such a font and fonts in general cannot be loaded into Tcl/Tk without installing it, I decided to handle it in this way. Hope that this is pleasing you anyways.

Precision

Please note that this application is as precise as your system is. Under Linux, as long as NTP synchronisation is activated, the precision is in other words as accurate as it could be with this technology. See also: timesyncd service

Limitations and trade-offs

Thanks

My thanks goes to:

Feature requests?

For any kind of feature you would like to see or bug reporting or thank you’s:

Email me