Coming Soon: Live Clock

[David B]

Hello Alice Community! I am making something that will come in handy for some people! I am making a live clock on Alice that detects the time on your computer, and displays that time. In addition to the clock that will be in this program, I am planning to have a few other features that I am keeping a secret for now installed on it! Stay tuned for more details!

[Dameria]

I don't know if you know this, but I made a program already called Clock that tracks and displays the time in real time from your computer. It is actually a link in my signature, the 3rd one that says "Real-Time Clock".

So, I don't want to demotivate you or anything, but its already been done, here is my program:

[reuben2011]

You can still make it though, it would be good programming practice and it would be a personal achievement for yourself. Just to let you know that if you write the progra, you would just be re-inventing the wheel.

[David B]

Originally Posted by Dameria

I don't know if you know this, but I made a program already called Clock that tracks and displays the time in real time from your computer. It is actually a link in my signature, the 3rd one that says "Real-Time Clock".

So, I don't want to demotivate you or anything, but its already been done, here is my program:

Yes, I know you already did it once. In fact, it was your program that inspired me. My program won't look quite like yours though, and as I said in my first post, I will have other things besides a clock.

[Dameria]

Like a stopwatch and countdown?

[David B]

You guessed it! Live Clock Beta Version 1 Is Here! Try it out, and tell me how it goes! So far, I am only aware of one bug, but I am trying to fix it.

Again, please report any bugs here!

[Dameria]

I don't get it, all it is is a stopwach so far, and it doesn't even work very well because it basically just counts up by 1 every 1 second with a bunch of decimal number next to it, it doesn't show the millisecond change rate in real time like a real stopwatch.

And where is the clock part? All I can do is press the button for the stopwatch.

[David B]

Originally Posted by Dameria

I don't get it, all it is is a stopwach so far, and it doesn't even work very well because it basically just counts up by 1 every 1 second with a bunch of decimal number next to it, it doesn't show the millisecond change rate in real time like a real stopwatch.

And where is the clock part? All I can do is press the button for the stopwatch.

Actually, the clock is included, but the camera is set to a position that only shows the stopwatch. As for the stopwatch, I am working on fixing this problem. I will probably just change the stopwatch system altogether. If you want to try out the clock, click on the button that looks like this:



After you do that, click on the button that looks like this:



From the dummy menu, choose the Date-Time dummy.





After moving the camera, the screen will look like this:



Click the button that looks like this:



Click the play button:



Watch in amazement!



Additional Notice: As you may have noticed, some of the buttons in my snapshots, look different, that is because I modified Alice's Python Code, and my download of Alice 2.2 looks like this:

[Dameria]

I fixed the stopwatch thing in your version by going to the stopwatch method and making the duration of that last line of code in the while statement set to "Duration = 0.05 seconds", and then put that whole thing in a rounding function so that it only shows first two decimal places instead of all of it.

Also you should add a button in the actual program to switch to the clock portion. Oh, and the stop watch is totally off. You are using the "time elapsed" function, or something like that, but you should be. There is no way to reset the time because of this, even when you click the reset button, it will just keep on producing the same elapsed time, which is not a stop watch at all.

[David B]

Originally Posted by Dameria

I fixed the stopwatch thing in your version by going to the stopwatch method and making the duration of that last line of code in the while statement set to "Duration = 0.05 seconds", and then put that whole thing in a rounding function so that it only shows first two decimal places instead of all of it.

Also you should add a button in the actual program to switch to the clock portion. Oh, and the stop watch is totally off. You are using the "time elapsed" function, or something like that, but you should be. There is no way to reset the time because of this, even when you click the reset button, it will just keep on producing the same elapsed time, which is not a stop watch at all.

Please upload your version of my program so that I may see what changes you made. Please upload it as 1.5 Beta. As for what you said about the switching between the clock/stopwatch thing. I have already implemented that feature in 2 Beta, but I am not going to release the second beta just yet because I am not ready yet. I will be sure to have Beta 2 ready by this coming Saturday. Also, in order to reset the stopwatch, you have to exit Alice altogether. This is a problem that I am trying to fix, but I am not sure how. Also, I want to figure out how to get rid of the super long number that appears in front of the stopwatch.

ex: instead of 555.3842819348600542189621921 I want 555.39

My clock is working properly as far as I can tell, but I am still trying to make sure that the day of the week detector is working properly. The day of the week detector scans constantly to see if the day of the week has changed, but this change only occurs at midnight. I am making an attempt to make sure that at midnight, the day of the week is automatically changed, and you don't need to restart the program. As far as I can tell, this scanning system is working properly. I plan to get rid of my stopwatch system altogether, and start it over from scratch, because in Beta 2 of my live clock, some of the bugs that I didn't know exsisted are starting to come out of the woodwork.

I know of no problems with the clock in Beta 1 of my project, but some of the problems I know of in Beta 1 of my stopwatch are:

1.) To reset the stopwatch, you must restart Alice altogether.
2.) The restart button on the stopwatch only works the first time you use it.
3.) The stopwatch is slow.
4.) The stopwatch is too detailed. ex: 555.3842819348600542189621921 instead of 555.39.
5.) The minutes and hours on the stopwatch do not show. ex: 65.3842819348600542189621921 instead of 1:05.39