It would be nice if the ui would not just have a countdown but also a completion time.
Something like…
Time remaining: 48:30
Job complete: 12:05pm
And ideally it would use the local time on my computer, not the awesomely NTP’ed server side clock that I surely have drifted from. A nice Date() object in javascript would probably do it?
To the inevitable person who calls me on it: Yes I understand addition of times, but no, I don’t want to have to do it when it’s seemingly so simple to add it here.
To the other inevitable person: Yes I understand you shouldn’t leave your Glowforge unattended, but with a simple engrave [which is 90% of what takes so long and thus for which it would be nice to have a time complete listed], I may be in the room but don’t watch it like a hawk.
Everyone is different. And that’s OK. Personally prefer a count down because 2:00, 4:00 or 10:00pm mean nothing to me. Don’t carry a phone or a watch. 58 minutes from now matters because that tells me how much time I have to do something else.
But looking at it differently, even if the actual time was important that change would be about 238th on my list of easy changes to the S/W.
The issue about UI facing ETA’s (with completion times) you’d have to account for pauses for thermal issues. (or any other external non-accounted things) I.e. I had a 17 min op that took 44 mins cause it kept stopping to cool down. So to list a time vs. how long it takes may confuse/piss off people.
If they did list the date/time it would need a huge asterisk with a list of external events that the eta does not account for. Or not list it at all and just say ‘This will take this long’. shrug
That’s not a bad point about slowdowns, and there are probably other complications too, but still. I think it would have value and should be pretty easy to do.