> Olin Lathrop wrote: >> A more modern approach would be to make a frequency counter gated by the >> 1Hz signal from a GPS. GPS satellites have their own atomic clocks, so >> GPS time is also highly accurate. I don't know about short term accuracy >> though as exported by common GPS receivers. You'd probably want to >> observe the target frequency over some time period with the GPS-gated >> frequency counter. > > Generic GPS receiver modules can easily put out a 1 PPS signal that's > accurate to +/- 500 ns relative to absolute time, and +/- 50 ns is readily > available with special operating modes. This means that the short-term > accuracy is better than 1 PPM, and the long-term averaged result can be > much better than this. With care, you can begin to approach the 1e-14 > accuracy of the Cesium standards themselves, using a good quartz or > rubidium local oscillator for short-term stability -- and the ability to > ride through any GPS outages. > > I once used GPS-disciplined oscillators as a reference for aligning FM > broadcast simulcast systems (connected by T1 telephone lines with variable > latencies) to +/- 1 us overall, and it worked just fine. > > As it happens, I'm right now in the middle of building a demonstration > network time server (SNTP, TIME and DAYTIME protocols) based on a Motorola > Oncore UT GPS receiver module and the new W7100 Ethernet chip from WIZnet. > It's a sweet little setup. For me the definitive GPS disciplined oscillator project is at http://www.rt66.com/~shera/ which seems to be simple to make. One of my long term projects. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist