Setup and support.

What you need

Time Buddy is a round puck. The top is translucent, the base is dark, and a ring of lights glows through the top. On the top are a round button and a switch. USB-C is on the side.

• The puck
• A USB-C cable and a USB power source. A wall adapter or a computer port is fine. There is no battery. It stays plugged in.
• A phone or computer with Wi-Fi and a browser
• Your home Wi-Fi name and password. The network has to be 2.4 GHz. A 5 GHz-only network will not appear.

Set up Wi-Fi

You only do this once, or again if you change the password or move the puck to a new network. Your Wi-Fi password is saved on the puck. It is not sent to timebuddy.ca.

1. Plug the cable into the puck, then into power. A red chase means setup mode: every third light, stepping around the ring. That only happens when no Wi-Fi is saved.
2. On your phone or computer, join the Wi-Fi network whose name starts with TimeBuddy-. The ending is a short code unique to your puck.
3. Your phone may say this network has no internet, and ask you to sign in or to stay connected. Stay on it. The network is the puck, and it exists only for setup.
4. A setup page should open on its own. If it does not, open a browser and go to http://192.168.4.1.
5. Choose your home network, enter the password, and save.

The puck restarts and tries the network you saved.

Privacy

Two different addresses

Open that page only if you want to look. If several Time Buddies share one network, the first one keeps timebuddy.local. Each of the others uses a longer name, timebuddy- followed by its own code. The status page on that puck prints the name it is actually using. Some routers do not support the .local name. If the page will not open, look in your router's device list for the puck and use the IP address it shows, something like 192.168.1.50. The ring keeps the time either way.

Reading the ring

Twenty-four lights. In day mode each light is one hour, and a full ring is 24 hours. In week mode each light is seven hours, and a full ring is 7 days. The colors are the same either way.

• The first half of the cycle is green warming toward yellow.
• The second half is yellow moving toward red, until the ring is full.
• At 24 hours, or at 7 days, the whole ring switches to a red pulse. Lights then go dark from the start, one per extra hour in day mode, or one per extra seven hours in week mode.
• When twice the cycle has passed (48 hours, or 14 days), the whole ring flashes red.

The timer needs the internet once after each time you plug it in, so it can learn the clock. That request is only for the time. Until then a single blue light blinks and the timer picture waits. The start time is saved through power loss. After the clock syncs, the ring catches up to the real elapsed time.

What people use it for

Sourdough on the counter

Day mode. Feed the starter, then reset. When the ring is full and the last lights are red, a day has passed. After that, a red pulse means it is overdue.

Sourdough in the fridge

Week mode. Feed, then reset. A full ring is a week on the shelf in the fridge. The switch does not restart the count. If you move a starter from the counter to the fridge mid-cycle, flip to week and the same elapsed time is drawn on the longer scale.

Plants

Week mode if you water about once a week. Day mode if you check every day. Reset when you water. Time Buddy does not sense the soil. It only shows how long it has been.

Pills and other daily doses

Day mode. Reset when you take a dose. The ring shows how long since then. It will not sound an alarm at a set time. It is not a medical device. If a dose is time-critical, use a reminder made for that.

Other daily or weekly things

A ferment, dough left to proof, a filter, a chore you keep meaning to do. If it happens about once a day or about once a week, reset when you do it and let the ring watch the gap.

Button and switch

Round button: start again

Press it four times. Each press has to land within two seconds of the one before.

1. About a third of the ring turns red.
2. About two thirds turn red.
3. The whole ring turns red.
4. The ring flashes green, and the timer starts over from now.

Wait longer than two seconds and the sequence cancels. The timer picture comes back, and the old start time is unchanged. The status page has a Reset Timer button that does the same thing in one step. It asks first.

Switch: day or week

Flip the switch on the top. Three orange flashes mean day, 24 hours. Three blue flashes mean week, 7 days. Trust the flashes. You do not need the status page. The clock does not restart when you flip the switch.

Forget Wi-Fi

Unplug the puck. Hold the round button. Plug it back in and keep holding. The ring fills with red as you hold. Keep holding until the ring is full, about two seconds. It then spins red quickly, clears the saved network, and comes back in setup mode. If you let go early, nothing is cleared.

You can also clear Wi-Fi from the status page, with Reset WiFi Settings. The puck restarts into setup.

The page on the puck

You do not need this page to operate Time Buddy. After Wi-Fi is saved, the puck keeps the time by itself. You never have to open a browser or a phone to reach it.

If you do want the status page, on your home Wi-Fi open http://timebuddy.local (or the longer name, or the IP address). The page shows:

• That Wi-Fi is connected, and the address and hostname
• The current time
• Whether the timer is running, and whether the mode is day (24 hours) or week (7 days)
• When the timer started, and how long has passed

Reset Timer starts the count over from now.

Reset WiFi Settings forgets the network. The ring goes to the red chase after it restarts. Join TimeBuddy- again and save the new network.

Debug mode is for testing. While it is on, one real second counts as one hour on the ring, so a full day of colors takes about 24 seconds. Turn it off when you are done watching. Turning it off puts the ring back to real time. It does not change when the timer started, unless you also reset. Unplugging the puck turns debug mode off.

If something's wrong

Still stuck on a beta unit: run through the Wi-Fi section once more, then use the note on the reservation form at timebuddy.ca and say what the ring is doing. The pattern (red chase, blue chase, one blue light, amber, or the timer colors) is the most useful thing you can report.