Time changes

[irvineboy]

I set my light timer at home to turn on at 6pm every night. I time it with my iPhone. I notice after a few weeks, my lights turn on at 5:58pm. Does the iPhone skip minutes? Not sure why the timer turns on earlier and earlier. I’ll set it again but the same thing happens after a few weeks.

 

[ThatTechyGuy]

What brand of timer do you have? I can try to do some troubleshooting via research for you!

 

[irvineboy]

It’s Hampton Bay

 

[ThatTechyGuy]

I have a few more questions. Do you have it set up in the Apple Home app? Is this an automation you have set?

Or is it a third-party app you use on your iPhone? There could be a few things going on here. If you could also post the model of the timer you have that would be great!

 

[irvineboy]

To clarify, I am setting the time on the Hampton bay itself. I’m using the iPhone as a way to gauge the time. So I set the time as say, 5:59pm. Look at my iPhone. As soon as my iPhone turns 6pm, I’ll set the time on the Hampton Bay at 6pm. That way, it’s exactly the same time as my iPhone. But after a couple of weeks, the lights will start turning on a few minutes earlier. It will turn on at 5:59pm and 5:58pm. So just wondering how that happens unless the iPhone auto adjusts. But that usually only happens for daylight savings. Not a few minutes ahead.

 

[ThatTechyGuy]

To clarify, I am setting the time on the Hampton bay itself. I’m using the iPhone as a way to gauge the time. So I set the time as say, 5:59pm. Look at my iPhone. As soon as my iPhone turns 6pm, I’ll set the time on the Hampton Bay at 6pm. That way, it’s exactly the same time as my iPhone. But after a couple of weeks, the lights will start turning on a few minutes earlier. It will turn on at 5:59pm and 5:58pm. So just wondering how that happens unless the iPhone auto adjusts. But that usually only happens for daylight savings. Not a few minutes ahead.

The iPhone should have it's timezone set automatically from the internet, as well as the time on it. It's probably more of an issue with the timer than the iPhone not having the correct time, or losing minutes.

 

[irvineboy]

Ok very strange. I don’t know why the timer on a landscaping setup will automatically adjust the time a few minutes as weeks progress.

 

[ThatTechyGuy]

What is probably going on is that the internal clock of the system isn't very accurate, maybe every second is .0001 or .001 ms quicker than an actual second. Then over weeks, those ms every second add up to minutes off the actual time. There are other possibilities as to why that is happening, but I don't believe it has anything to do with your iPhone's time being wrong.