Here the DCF means no maintenance at all. Plus I usually do not have any NTP device running. And when I some NTP connecred device running, it is evening, I'm tired and keep forgetting about any clock setting year long... so I'm glad I have a few DCF clocks I may rely on.
But when the transmission is not able to adjust for the DST automatically, it sucks...
Wonder if you couldn't receive DCF, it is claimed to cover whole Europe...

The U.S has something similar (WWV).  I've picked up the time stations over shortwave in the past.  Here's a video of somebody doing so.

MSF works for us here, and we don't have to create an off-set to compensate for CET.

Well for most people using a regular clock and then manually syncing it to a source that is already synced to a NTP time server is good enough. The syncing isn't extra work if you live in a place where the clocks need to be adjusted every March/November anyway. I'm just saying that unless your pedantic about keeping the proper time on all your clocks, a regular clock is good enough as you have to adjust it twice per year anyway.

I don't know if it's part of my autistic condition or not, but one thing I have always hated is a clock that isn't showing the exact time. I see no value whatever in a clock that isn't correct; the purpose of a clock is to tell the time, if it isn't doing that accurately, then it's of no use to me.

All our clocks here, with the exception of those built into appliances like the cooker and microwave, are radio-controlled. We haven't so far managed to find MSF-set watches that we like, but hopefully we will at some stage.

I don't know if it's part of my autistic condition or not, but one thing I have always hated is a clock that isn't showing the exact time. I see no value whatever in a clock that isn't correct; the purpose of a clock is to tell the time, if it isn't doing that accurately, then it's of no use to me.

I, too, own a few clocks, which display the exact time. Very accurately. To the spot. Twice per day.
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But I prefer some which actually do work...

 

I, too, own a few clocks, which display the exact time. Very accurately. To the spot. Twice per day.
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But I prefer some which actually do work...

 

I just have one clock in my room, but I have many digital cameras, and I like to keep the exact time in them, I set the hour manually in all my cameras and clocks, because it is the only way to me to do it. One of my cameras had wifi sync so it could automatically set the current time from my cellphone, but the wifi feature stopped working by some reason.

I just have to ask. How does the time and date is broadcasted and what it uses as a sync signal? And how complicated are those clocks with auto sync and how many extra microamps that feature drains from the battery? 

I just have to ask. How does the time and date is broadcasted and what it uses as a sync signal? And how complicated are those clocks with auto sync and how many extra microamps that feature drains from the battery? 

Just follow the link to technical information from the MSF website. It will show you how the UK system works, I'm sure others around the world are similar.

I just have one clock in my room, but I have many digital cameras, and I like to keep the exact time in them, I set the hour manually in all my cameras and clocks, because it is the only way to me to do it. One of my cameras had wifi sync so it could automatically set the current time from my cellphone, but the wifi feature stopped working by some reason.

I just have to ask. How does the time and date is broadcasted and what it uses as a sync signal? And how complicated are those clocks with auto sync and how many extra microamps that feature drains from the battery? 

The Wifi time sync stopped working:
  Most probably the thing had the NTP server address hard wired and that given served was brought off line. It was very common lousyness from the equipment maker side, who hard wired the direct address of one of the public accessible servers (operating at that time), without allowing the user to change it (the distribution servers were not existing yet). Plus many have "a feature"to start the synchronization every few seconds. Initially, with few such devices, there seemed to not be any problem. As the number of such devices used worldwide grew, they just overloaded the few original NTP servers, although 100' of others became online in the meantime. And they were flooding the corresponding network elements as well (the NTP is quite demanding on the infrastructure beside the few bits that needed to be handled, because it has to keep precise track of all latencies). So those servers were just switched off some years ago, as they were not working because of the flooding anyway.
So look into the setting, if you can change the NTP address, you may redirect it somewhere else (google where, according to your location or ISP provider).


How is the time and date broadcast: Generally all these transmitters send a pulse each second, the pulse parameters are then altered (e.g. 100 vs 200ms amplitude reduction to 25% in the case of DCF77) so it then represents one bit of data. Each minute is send a synchronization mark (in case of the DCF77 the 59'th second pulse is missing), the basic data packet is then 1 minute long (so 59 bits for the DCF). In these bits is usually coded the time valid for the following minute , the date, (minutes, hours, date, day in week in BCD,...), some extra bits like if the DST is in effect or not, if the DST transition is approaching, if there is some transitional minute with extra second in it (correction between the physics definition of a second vs the actual earth rotation,...), some transmitter status (e.g. main vs backup transmitter online for the DCF), some dataerror protection (parity bits for the DCF), with the rest some additional data (during cold war the DCF contained control for the civil defense systems, recently this area was leased for "home wheather station" makers to distribute weather forecast data; but these are encrypted and so need special decoder, sopd with the license for the use of the wheather forecast services).

There's not external servers or services involved in the sync between my phone and the camera. The phone connects directly to the wifi signal of the camera, without involving the internet, so the server is hosted on the camera, then an application in your phone calls the server of your camera and all works. Now when I try to sync the camera the app launches a device error, but the wifi connection is made, so seems like the camera is not creating the server for the features, but the wifi connection can still be made, so it seems to be a firmware problem, but I haven't updated the camera firmware, but the application yes, so maybe the app can no longer support the camera.

My camera is almost 4 years old, and I barely used the wifi function. So I would not be surprised if they removed the support from the app for save space, but that's weird because the camera and its firmware is generic.

Interestingly the phone app requires GPS to be enabled for work, even if there's no internet, that's weird.

The error comes after connecting to the camera wifi, when I click the shoot button in order to see the the live video of my camera in my phone, it says "device error, please try again!".


Also, I don't know how to tweak the camera server settings, the camera operative system have a menu with the basic settings and I doubt there is a way to tweak settings further than that menu.

I see.
The GPS I understand as first the way how the app may get accurate time (it does not rely on the phone system time), or just to put position stamps on the photos.
But it is weird. Maybe the connection have operated in some not really safe way (no encryption,...), and so the OS after some upgrade is blocking it (it does not know it is the camera, it likely thinks it is some spying "free wifi" type of attack).
Devices acting like "servers" may have some settings accessible there (via some html gui), try to connect to it via some computer and look what you see there.

The wifi of the camera is protected by password and WAP2 PSK, and my phone seems to trust it, so we can discard the wifi connection as the problem, so the problem might be in the camera or the phone app. When I connect to the IP address of the camera by the web browser in my phone and my computer nothing happens, also the manual doesn't feature such thing. It's very probably that the app no longer support my camera, the camera can't fail from one day to another.

I doubt the phone maker would kill support for 4 year old cameras in their app.
It looks to me some configuration in the camera was screwed up somehow.
And still the security features aren't out of the game. It may be the OS refuses to connect just certain ports.

The app is actually developed by an independent developer in Play Stornot related to the phone maker or the camera maker. Maybe the camera settings were screwed up by a huge magnetic pulse like a preheat fluorescent fixture, a static electricity discharge, the spike of the fridge motor starting up made its way through the charger and the camera or some kind of cosmic particle made its way through the atmosphere and hitted my camera. But it's very unlikely that the app itself tweaked things in my camera, or a wrong configuration by me, because the menu can't go any further than basic camera settings. My other theory is that the problem might be the battery that is very old. It still works perfectly and I haven't noticed a decrease of battery duration, but maybe it is outputting less voltage or less current and the camera is refusing to create the server because the current or voltage is not enough. The battery is a bit inflated.

The app is actually developed by an independent developer in Play Stornot related to the phone maker or the camera maker. Maybe the camera settings were screwed up by a huge magnetic pulse like a preheat fluorescent fixture, a static electricity discharge, the spike of the fridge motor starting up made its way through the charger and the camera or some kind of cosmic particle made its way through the atmosphere and hitted my camera. But it's very unlikely that the app itself tweaked things in my camera, or a wrong configuration by me, because the menu can't go any further than basic camera settings. My other theory is that the problem might be the battery that is very old. It still works perfectly and I haven't noticed a decrease of battery duration, but maybe it is outputting less voltage or less current and the camera is refusing to create the server because the current or voltage is not enough. The battery is a bit inflated.

I meant camera maker, my error there.

If the battery is swolen, stop using it immediately and replace it. It is on the brink of an explosion (the rwaction triggered by layer separation and consequent uneven charge state and then internal balancing currents, tends to be really runaway style).

It may be the voltage is collapsing during server activity, not causing resets yet, but causing the WiFi to generate transmission errors.

For the config screw up: Strongly doubt anything else than something was errorneously configured from the WiFi (it could be, the factory setting security isn't that great)...

I tried to use the wifi features with the camera connected to the charger, but still the same error, so we can discard the battery as the problem. When I keep trying to connect to the camera server the app says that the connection times out, so the camera is not creating the server or wifi is not transferring the data. I think that the problem is in the wifi mode that got physically screwed up by some strong electromagnetic pulse or by a static distance that messed up a chip or transistor, and there's nothing to do about it.