Chapter 05b

Tide clock

Tide clock turns the panel into a local tide cycle: rising or falling water, neighboring high and low times, and a now marker on an animated wave. The underlay you configured still shows through around the water — the tide treatment is the scene, not a replacement for your ambient motion.

Schematic of tide clock wave and high/low captions on a B0rd panel
Fig. — Tide clock panel scene (schematic).

Two ways to use it

  • Sticky tide — set display.base_mode totide_clock so the sign stays on tide. SoftAPPresets → Tide clock applies the built-intide_clock preset (USB:presets apply tide_clock then settings save).
  • Rotation — with launch countdown or idle clock as base, enable scene.tide.enabled and include tide inscene.timing.order. SoftAP Display → Playlistcan toggle Include tide in rotation when your firmware exposes that slot.

Choosing a station

Live predictions come from the public NOAA CO-OPS API over HTTPS when the sign is on home Wi‑Fi with wall time set. The default station is8722004 (Sebastian Inlet, Florida). Change it withscene.tide.station_id — find IDs attidesandcurrents.noaa.gov.

USB example:settings set scene.tide.station_id 9414290 thensettings save (San Francisco example). Optional labelscene.tide.station_name is stored for your records; it is not drawn on the panel today.

What you see while data loads

  • Loading tide… — fetch in progress.
  • No tide data — empty result, offline, or unsupported station.
  • Wave + captions — bounded window (defaultscene.tide.window_hours = 24) with paired High/Low labels.

The scene does not draw a wave or extrema without real prediction samples. Refresh cadence defaults to scene.tide.refresh_minutes = 60; failed fetches back off automatically.

Appearance knobs

Most operators only change station and rotation. Finer tuning (all optional):

  • scene.tide.dwell_ms — visit budget when tide is in rotation (default 12000).
  • scene.tide.wave_color — caption and marker hue (water uses its own ramp).
  • scene.tide.wave_alpha — water intensity on the matrix.
  • scene.tide.background_override + color/alpha — solid fill instead of transparent water over the underlay.

Full ranges: Settings reference. NOAA requires attribution for public data — keep product credits honest when you publish desk photos or storefront copy.

Playlist and time

Tide visits obey the same synchronized timeline as idle clock and launch countdown. Live tide data may change captions and water level, but it does not change visit duration or cycle order. SeePlaylist and scene timing.

Related: App catalog page ·Display & idle clock ·Launch countdown ·Networking modes ·Settings reference