American Time Blog

When someone walks into a building, their experience is essential. Occupants and visitors should feel safe and secure. Technology should support efficient work and precise, real-time communications.

Digital communication and signage in a building is an effective way to achieve this. In addition to sharing important daily news and messaging capabilities, modern communication platforms can deliver emergency alerts and clear instructions for keeping individuals safe and secure. In other words, a communication platform is most valuable when it can be used for both routine daily messaging and to bolster and reinforce critical emergency alerts. Let’s look at a few specific examples.

Follow the tips below to ensure your clocks and clock systems are ready for the time change.

Routinely check your clocks leading up to Daylight Saving Time

The beginning and end of Daylight Saving Time serve as natural reminders to make sure your facility's clocks are reliably keeping everyone on schedule.

To ensure that a wired system clock is syncing correctly, unplug it, wait at least 10 seconds, and plug it back in. The clock should be receiving synchronization signals from the master controller and display the correct time within 24 hours.

You can take a similar approach to your wireless system battery-operated clocks. Take the battery out, assuring the clock hands come to a complete stop, and reinstall it.

This is a good time to check the life of your batteries, too. If a battery is supplying 1.5 volts or more, it should be good to go. The clock will automatically be on time within 12 hours or sooner.

Now that daylight saving time (DST) has passed, you may discover that some of your clocks didn’t adjust properly. As a result, you’re dealing with employee or staff complaints, classes or shift changes may be off, and maintenance teams are bogged down with work orders.

Here are some troubleshooting tips for clocks that aren’t correctly adjusting for DST.

When a building or campus’s clock system runs on a Wi-Fi network or Power over Ethernet (PoE) connection, it’s an elegant solution because it solves the need for synchronized time simply and effectively: Each clocks displays the same, precise time that it retrieves using an existing Wi-Fi network or via an Ethernet cable. Both Wi-Fi and PoE clocks are in the IP Network category of clock systems.  

Some companies assume that they need to purchase and operate an expensive time server to support an IP Network clock system. As a global provider of clock systems to some of the most recognized companies around the world, we can authoritatively say that spending thousands on a time server could be redundant, unnecessary and a waste of capital if it’s not needed for the application.  

Inefficiencies in the workplace are not always easy to spot. You won't see employees literally setting $100 bills on fire, but inevitably, there will be times during the day when otherwise productive work hours might as well be going up in smoke.

And this isn't necessarily due to a lack of work ethic or motivation. At DMR Electronics, a manufacturer of industrial electronic components and wiring harnesses, employees sometimes had no other choice but to waste time standing around while waiting for meetings to get underway. But, it wasn't their fault. Since there was no single time source to rely on, their schedules were easily thrown out of whack.

The phenomenon led DMR to research synchronized clock systems, ultimately choosing American Time to bring an added sense of order to its daily operations.

Float Euphoria, based in Kennewick, Washington, isn’t your typical spa. They offer a variety of stress-fighting services like massage, cupping, and floatation therapy, a weightless spa experience that feels like you’re floating on top of the water — because you are.

A Tight Schedule in a Relaxed Environment

In order for client’s to get the most out of their massage and float experiences, things have to happen right on time. Both the massage and flotation services must stick to a strict schedule for cleaning, maintenance, and to keep appointments from running awry.

As far as we know, time travel hasn't been invented yet, so when hospital records show a patient leaving one area at a certain time and arriving at their destination two minutes earlier, something isn't right.

At the Essentia Healthcare Campus in Duluth, Minnesota, this discrepancy became problematic when billing the patient’s insurance company, who didn't buy the proposition that someone could be in two places at once, thus refused to pay the bills when that's what the records showed.

This is a story of how changing one aspect of hospital operations saved a facility thousands of dollars, illustrating just how important it is that all the clocks in your facility stay in sync.

Anyone who's ever visited an ice cream shop, craft beer taproom, or the cereal aisle of a grocery store knows choices can be hard. Cheerios or Captain Crunch? Weird... somehow they both ended up my cart. But sometimes in business, you have to make just one choice and when making big decisions is part of your job, the stakes only rise.

If you're tasked with selecting a synchronized clock system for your facility, there are many options to choose from. If you don’t know much about synchronized time, your mission might seem easy at first, you just buy clocks and hang them on the walls right? But just like buying an ice cream cone or picking out your favorite cereal brand, there are a variety of options to choose from. We are, after all, talking about installing an entire network of electronic devices.

As you delve deeper into this mission, you might require some guidance. Here, we'll help you determine which type of clock is best for you, depending on your industry and the type of facility you're responsible for keeping on time.

If you’re trying to bake a cake, but can’t find the whisk or spatula, and your favorite pan is dirty, baking a cake is going to be pretty difficult. That’s because you don’t have the resources you need when you need them. Trying to check the time without a clock puts you in the same conundrum. No clock, no time. No pan, no cake.

So, where do you hang a wall clock so everyone can see it? Is there a certain height you should aim for? Do you hang it 7ft off the floor? Right below the sprinklers? Three feet left of the armoire? Unfortunately, there’s no one answer on how high you should hang your wall clock, but there are tips to consider for choosing an ideal place.

Older technologies may not get people as excited as the new iPhone, but in many cases, they prove their enduring usefulness time and time again.

Election officials still depend on paper ballots because it's hard to trust the inner workings of a computer system for a task as important as counting votes. People who conduct a lot of business over the phone prefer a landline because it provides more audio clarity and they know it won't drop their calls. Audiophiles still prefer vinyl records to their digital counterparts because there's just something about that warm, analog sound.

While the bugs get worked out in the new devices that dominate our lives, trusty standbys remain at your service. You might think that one casualty of the march of technology would be the humble wall clock, which now competes with the smartphone in everyone's pocket.

Those phones do a lot, including display the time, but they don't accomplish that task as well as a wall clock connected to a synchronized time system. Despite almost everyone having a clock in their pocket, there are many everyday scenarios that necessitate a wall clock, whether for safety, security or convenience.