ctm = Control Time Machines

Control Time Machines (ctm) lets you control clocks from Time Machines Corp..

Status: Can retrieve status, use uptimers and downtimers with an API1.1 or API2.0 clock.

Install

I'd like to get this in homebrew and Fedora repos eventually, but for now you can build the program yourself. In the main repo directory either of these will build ctm for your platform:

just build   # via the justfile (also: just test, just fmt)
make         # via the Makefile

Development prerequisites

The just recipes need a few tools installed: just, gh, shellcheck, markdownlint-cli2, jq, gum, cue, and the gh-observer gh extension. On macOS with Homebrew, ./.just/lib/install-prerequisites.sh checks for all of them and installs anything missing - run it once and you're set. The cue CLI is new for contributors: it validates .repo.toml against docs/repo-toml.cue (just cue-verify).

Usage

Invocation:

ctm [flags] $SUBCOMMAND [flags] $CLOCK_IP

Global flags (may appear before or after the subcommand, but must precede positional args):

• -timeout duration - how long to wait for a clock to respond (default 2s)
• -port - UDP port the clock listens on (default 7372)

ctm help (or ctm -h, or ctm $SUBCOMMAND -h) prints usage.

Subcommands:

• status returns the clock's status
• time puts the clock into time display mode
• up_ms puts the clock into uptimer mode displaying minutes and seconds
• up_hms puts the clock into uptimer mode displaying hours, minutes and seconds
• up_run tells the uptimer to run
• up_pause tells the uptimer to pause
• up_reset_ms resets the uptimer displaying minutes and seconds
• up_reset_hms resets the uptimer displaying hours, minutes and seconds
• up_set_time H:M:S:tenths:hundreds sets the uptimer to the hours:minutes:seconds:tenths:hundreths and you can drop off any of the smaller units that are irrelevant to you. If you want no hours you still need to start with 0:.
• down_run tells the downtimer to run (API2.0 clocks only)
• down_pause tells the downtimer to pause (API2.0 clocks only)
• down_set_time H:M:S:tenths:hundreds sets the downtimer like up_set_time sets the uptimer (API2.0 clocks only)

Status output looks like:

sent status query to 192.168.42.204:7372
response hexdump:
00000000  01 c0 a8 2a cc 70 b3 d5  75 68 e2 05 00 12 2e 02  |...*.p..uh......|
00000010  2a 2c 50 4f 45 5f 43 6c  6f 63 6b 5f 55 54 43 00  |*,POE_Clock_UTC.|
00000020  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
packet length 35 (API version 1.x)
Type 1
IP 192.168.42.204
MAC 70b3d57568e2
Ver 0500
Syncs 4654
Time {2 42 44}
Name POE_Clock_UTC

Using the uptimer looks like:

$ ./ctm up_ms 192.168.42.204
sent command up_mode_ms to 192.168.42.204:7372
acked by clock
$ ./ctm up_run 192.168.42.204
sent command up_mode_run to 192.168.42.204:7372
acked by clock
$ ./ctm time 192.168.42.204
sent command time_mode to 192.168.42.204:7372
acked by clock

Known bugs

• Unimplemented:
  • setting dotmatrix text - I don't have a device to test this with yet.
  • exec stored program (API2.0)
  • relay close (API2.0)
  • dimmer set (API2.0)
  • color set for RGB (API2.0)

References

• TimeMachinesCorp API documentation:
  • Locator Protocol API v2.0
• I don't have a URL for the API v1.1 docs, but TimeMachinesCorp sent me a copy and not much has changed.
• Glen Gorton's project is the other repo on github for these clicks. It looks pretty cool actually, but the language is obscure to me and I'm unlikely to license the development environment just to try this out.