https://www.instagram.com/p/BQ51-6hgQH4/?taken-by=imakerobots
left clock: time now pulled from internet GET head data.
right clock: vhs open until time pulled from isvhsopen.com/api/status/, then parsing the JSON.
Rant begins
For some reason NodeMCU’s HTTPClient doesn’t just collect all the head data and make it available to you after you GET. Instead you have to say “please save me the Date value”, and (apparently) a bug in the system still doesn’t save it (2h of diving into the library didn’t help) so I have to make a second call with a raw WiFiClient to get only the HEAD data and read the Date. NodeMCU’s dev team has the most complicated Github issue submit I have ever seen - so complex that I gave up trying to submit a ticket. So what should have been a single call to the web is two and an extra 100 lines of code 
Rant ends