Time travel is a free software that can adjust a computer’s system clock. It can both speed up the clock or slow it down. It can also set the computer’s date and time to a very specific point in time. Imagine that you installed a new security system that will send you an email every time a door has been opened at exactly 12:00:00 A.M. You want to see if the system will work at exactly 11:59:59 P.M, 12:00:00 A.M, and 12:00:01 A.M. Instead of waiting for the exact 3 second window, Time travel will allow you to test if the system works at any time with a more flex window while getting the same results. This blog will demonstrate how to set up Time Travel to test for responses around mid night.
1. Run Time Travel as Administrator
Because Time Travel requires changing the date and time of the computer, it is recommended to run the software as administrator.
2. Set Running Clock Speed
In this blog, we are looking for the behavior of a certain device at exactly 11:59:59 P.M, 12:00:00 A.M, and 12:00:01 A.M. We can change the running clock speed of the computer to make the 3 second window seem longer. Click the “Change” button next to the “Running Clock Speed” box, and type in the new speed factor in the text box. (>1 ~ faster, <1, slower) For this blog, we will use 0.2, so the system time will be one fifth the original speed, or 5 times slower. This will turn our 3 second window into a 15 second window.
3. Set a destination time
Instead of waiting for the specific time, we can set the computer to moments before the window. Next to the “Set Time” button, enter the desired date and time in the text boxes. For this blog, we will enter “11:59:58 P.M” for the time. This will give us 5 seconds to prepare for the test. Do not click the button until you are completely ready to run the test.
4. Set up the task
For this blog, we will use N-Button’s Schedule function to test if we can send an email at exactly 12:00:00 A.M with a contact closure board. (Click here for how to use N-Button to send emails). We will set the starting time at 12:00:00, the duration to be 1 second, and set the action to “Send Email”.
5. Test the task
Once everything has been prepared, click the “Set Time” button from Time Travel. Then, you will have jumped to 11:59:58 P.M with each second on the computer moving 5 times as slow. (It will take five real seconds for the computer to move one second) Once the computer clock has reached 11:59:59 P.M, we can try to execute the email action, as many times as we would like, for example, 3 times. Similarly, we will do the same at 12:00:00 A.M and 12:00:01 A.M. If everything worked, you should have sent and received exactly 3 emails sent from the instance of “12:00:00 A.M”