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Presentation Timer
A timer a speaker can read from across the room: green while you have time, yellow when you should be wrapping up, red when you are out — and it keeps counting so you know how far over you are.
How to use it
- Set the length of the talk.
- Set when the screen turns yellow and red, as minutes remaining. A common choice is yellow with 2 minutes left and red with 1.
- Choose whether the clock counts down to zero or up from zero.
- Press Full screen and put the screen where the speaker can see it, then Start.
- Past the limit the timer turns solid red and counts the overtime upward with a + sign.
Setting the signals
Speech clubs often use green, yellow and red signals at the minimum time, the midpoint and the maximum time: for a five-to-seven-minute speech, green at 5:00, yellow at 6:00 and red at 7:00 elapsed. To approximate that here, set the length to 7 minutes with yellow at 1 minute left and red at 0: the screen turns yellow at 6:00 and red at 7:00. The screen is green from the start, so there is no separate signal for the minimum time.
For conference talks, set the length to the slot minus question time, with yellow at about 5 minutes left and red at 1. The end sound is off by default so the room is not interrupted; turn it on if you want an audible signal.
Questions people ask
Can it count up instead of down?
Yes. Choose Count up. The colors change at the same moments; only the number shown is different.
What happens when time runs out?
The screen stays red and the clock counts up from +0:00 so the speaker and chair can see the overrun.
Can the speaker see it from the stage?
Use full screen on a laptop, tablet or spare monitor at the foot of the stage. The digits scale to fill the display and the whole screen carries the color.