The short version: plug it in, tell it where the water is, and read it like a clock. The longer version follows. Anything not answered here, write to us.
One day of your local tide, drawn as a single line of light across 1,536 points. The curve is the water; the thin red line is now. Left of the line is the twelve hours just past; right of it, the twelve to come. High water crests, low water hollows. You read the next tide the way you read the next hour on a clock face.
Plug in the single cable. If we have already commissioned your instrument to its shore, the tide appears on its own. There is nothing to set.
If the face shows a code and the address set.tidepiece.com, visit that address and enter your email. We send a sign-in link, no password to invent. Then enter the code and choose your shore. Within a minute or two, the face turns to your water.
No. The one cable carries both power and the tide. There is no wireless to configure, no app to install, nothing to charge, and no screen to wake. It hangs on the wall and keeps its water, for years, without attention.
From NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s tide stations, the same predictions mariners use. Your instrument keeps to the station nearest the shore you choose, and keeps itself current from the moment it is plugged in.
Any American shore NOAA charts: the family cottage on Ocracoke, the harbor you sailed from, the beach you grew up on. Change its shore whenever you like at set.tidepiece.com; the face follows within a minute.
The face holds its last tide until the connection returns, then quietly rights itself. After a power outage, the instrument finds its way back to the water on its own. There is nothing to reset.
Five years of the tide, included with the instrument. After five years, the service renews simply, and we will write to you well before then.
By arrangement: water temperature, moon phase, sunrise and set, worked into the face alongside the curve. For an evening or a season it can carry a line of your choosing, an anniversary or a welcome home, then return to the sea. Mention it when you inquire, or write to us.
Thirty-one: the number reclaimed, and the number there will ever be. Each instrument began as an American industrial signal display, built in 2011, saved from the landfill, completely refurbished and tested, and reprogrammed with custom code.
Yours will tell you. At every power-on, before the tide returns to the face, the instrument states its place in the edition: its own number over thirty-one, in Roman numerals. It holds there a moment, then goes back to the water.
Nothing is engraved on the case and no certificate ships in the box. The number lives in the instrument itself, which is the only place it needs to live. Unplug it, move it, pass it on, and it still knows what it is.