NTP Clock suggestions?
From: Miguel Barbosa Gonçalves
[]
Just checked the Windows taskbar clock and it has a 1 second delay...
At work I use Windows but use Mac OS X at home... but I am looking for a
solution for the Windows platform.
TIA,
Miguel
Both analogue and digital display, screen or taskbar (or both), UTC options,
and should not have a 1-second delay:
http://www.satsignal.eu/software/disk.html#TinyBen
Cheers,
David
SatSignal Software - Quality software written to your requirements
Web: http://www.satsignal.eu
Email: david-taylor@blueyonder.co.uk
Le 27 mai 2013 à 16:56, Miguel Barbosa Gonçalves a écrit :
I don't understand why a microprocessor with an Ethernet controller and a 7
segment display would cost so much to manufacture... I think I'll build my
own.
One advantage of having an OS and NTP client on board is that you get automatic TZ and DST offsets if you want. A Pi also works fine with a USB WiFi dongle so no ugly CAT5 wiring required. One of the Pi s I2C buses could be used to drive a 7 seg display controller such as those from Adafruit.
As you would have the full TCP stack you could configure it over the same wiFi . It's not Windows but doesn't need much power so long as you don't want to drive giant LEDs.
Good joke :-) I imagine the electricity bill at the end of the month.
I would like to have a clock sync with my super precise stratum 1 servers
:-) what's the point in having them if I can see the time anywhere? :-)
Cheers,
Miguel
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
One more idea: Buy one of those "Atomic Clocks" that run off WWVB. Then
use time code to modulate a very low power 60KHz radio transmitter. The
clocks will pick up your signal and sync to it. The clocks run on
battery power and you don't need wires.
But then I did notice you can buy exactly what you asked for $99.
/DS%5FTimeDisplays.pdfhttp://www.symmetricom.com/media/files/downloads/product-datasheets/DS%5FTimeDisplays.pdf
On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Bob Camp lists@rtty.us wrote:
Hi
If you are doing this from scratch today, would you go IRIG or would you
go RS-485 for a wall clock? Both will drive more cable than you are likely
to have in a house. Both are reasonably noise immune. With RS-485 there's
less to do. It's a serial stream like any other bunch of "stuff" into a
UART.
Some math:
YYMMDDHHMMSSCR = 13 ASCII characters. With one check byte it would be 14.
A baud rate of 115.4K isn't stretching things on RS-485 or on most UART's
these days.
Sent it at 7N1 you have 9 bits per character, 126 bits in the message.
Message takes a bit over 1 ms.
Time it to anywhere in the string and the clock should be within <+/- 2
ms. That's better than I can see on a clock. Better yet, time it to the
first (or last) character in the string. More or less a 10X improvement.
You could also drop the year / month / day if the clock isn't going to use
them.
Take any of the Arduino (or what ever) LED display boards and drive them
with something cheap. I doubt the "clock" end plus the drivers would be
over $30. I suspect IRIG would cost a bit more once you got it all worked
out.
Bob
On May 27, 2013, at 11:03 AM, Chris Albertson albertson.chris@gmail.com
wrote:
I've seen LLCD computer monitors used as clocks. Seems this would be
the perfect use for a Rasbury Pi. and a cheap monitor. $100 or maybe a
low-end Android tablet.
The way it is more commonly done is you have you computer that is
using NTP produce an IRIG time code. Then there are any number of
commercial clocks and large digital LED displays that will use IRIG.
IRIG displays are not cheap but they sure are easy to find.
On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 6:29 AM, Miguel Barbosa Gonçalves m@mbg.pt
wrote:
Hi!
I was wondering if anyone knows about a not so expensive wall digital
clock
that gets its time from an NTP server...
TIA,
Miguel
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--
Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California
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Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California
Hi
If you go with the Pi's I2C port, it's strictly a 3.3 volt port. Some (but not all) of the display boards are 5V gizmos.
If you go with a WiFi approach, be careful about latency. NTP only understands symmetric delays. Of course if you are on a cable modem there's noting in the WiFi that's worse than what you already have.
Bob
On May 27, 2013, at 1:25 PM, mike cook mc235960@gmail.com wrote:
Le 27 mai 2013 à 16:56, Miguel Barbosa Gonçalves a écrit :
I don't understand why a microprocessor with an Ethernet controller and a 7
segment display would cost so much to manufacture... I think I'll build my
own.
One advantage of having an OS and NTP client on board is that you get automatic TZ and DST offsets if you want. A Pi also works fine with a USB WiFi dongle so no ugly CAT5 wiring required. One of the Pi s I2C buses could be used to drive a 7 seg display controller such as those from Adafruit.
As you would have the full TCP stack you could configure it over the same wiFi . It's not Windows but doesn't need much power so long as you don't want to drive giant LEDs.
Good joke :-) I imagine the electricity bill at the end of the month.
I would like to have a clock sync with my super precise stratum 1 servers
:-) what's the point in having them if I can see the time anywhere? :-)
Cheers,
Miguel
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
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and follow the instructions there.
Hi
Is there a price shown somewhere on that sheet?
Bob
On May 27, 2013, at 2:23 PM, Chris Albertson albertson.chris@gmail.com wrote:
One more idea: Buy one of those "Atomic Clocks" that run off WWVB. Then
use time code to modulate a very low power 60KHz radio transmitter. The
clocks will pick up your signal and sync to it. The clocks run on
battery power and you don't need wires.
But then I did notice you can buy exactly what you asked for $99.
/DS%5FTimeDisplays.pdfhttp://www.symmetricom.com/media/files/downloads/product-datasheets/DS%5FTimeDisplays.pdf
On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Bob Camp lists@rtty.us wrote:
Hi
If you are doing this from scratch today, would you go IRIG or would you
go RS-485 for a wall clock? Both will drive more cable than you are likely
to have in a house. Both are reasonably noise immune. With RS-485 there's
less to do. It's a serial stream like any other bunch of "stuff" into a
UART.
Some math:
YYMMDDHHMMSSCR = 13 ASCII characters. With one check byte it would be 14.
A baud rate of 115.4K isn't stretching things on RS-485 or on most UART's
these days.
Sent it at 7N1 you have 9 bits per character, 126 bits in the message.
Message takes a bit over 1 ms.
Time it to anywhere in the string and the clock should be within <+/- 2
ms. That's better than I can see on a clock. Better yet, time it to the
first (or last) character in the string. More or less a 10X improvement.
You could also drop the year / month / day if the clock isn't going to use
them.
Take any of the Arduino (or what ever) LED display boards and drive them
with something cheap. I doubt the "clock" end plus the drivers would be
over $30. I suspect IRIG would cost a bit more once you got it all worked
out.
Bob
On May 27, 2013, at 11:03 AM, Chris Albertson albertson.chris@gmail.com
wrote:
I've seen LLCD computer monitors used as clocks. Seems this would be
the perfect use for a Rasbury Pi. and a cheap monitor. $100 or maybe a
low-end Android tablet.
The way it is more commonly done is you have you computer that is
using NTP produce an IRIG time code. Then there are any number of
commercial clocks and large digital LED displays that will use IRIG.
IRIG displays are not cheap but they sure are easy to find.
On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 6:29 AM, Miguel Barbosa Gonçalves m@mbg.pt
wrote:
Hi!
I was wondering if anyone knows about a not so expensive wall digital
clock
that gets its time from an NTP server...
TIA,
Miguel
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to
and follow the instructions there.
--
Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to
and follow the instructions there.
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to
https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
--
Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California
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and follow the instructions there.
Miguel:
If you are going to build your own, I would recommend you start with
something like the Microchip PIC32 Ethernet Starter Kit. Comes
with a free GCC C/C++ compiler and an Ethernet stack.
I happened to have one for another project, that already had a
four line serial LCD display hooked to it, as well as a serial port
command line interface running
Since I was already familiar with the Ethernet Stack that comes with
the Starter Kit, all it took was turning on the SNTP function in the
stack, and writing about ten lines of C code to get it running.
One update of NTP sourced UTC Hours-Minutes-Seconds time on the
display per command line request. (Anything more complicated is left as
an exercise for the student.)
That was after about an hour's research to find out the time
format that NTP uses (seconds since Jan 1, 1900) and the
(different) time format that UNIX uses (seconds since Jan 1, 1970).
And how they both deal with leap-seconds since their
epoch started.
Another hour of time figuring out how to convert that to
today's Hours, minutes, and seconds. But that is easy,
once it (finally) sinks in how to work with an epoch.
Now, the real fun begins when you decide that you might
want to convert NTP or UNIX time to Day of Week, Month,
Calendar Year, Day of Year, Week of year, and
adjustments for local time zone, with daylight savings time.
That was worth about four hours research and going to bed with
a head-ache. Learned all about "Julian Day" and "Modified
Julian Day", which it turns out has nothing to do with
the Julian Calendar. (Did you know that time started at high noon
on January 1, 4713 BC. ?) Finally discovered a code snippet
in Tom Van Baak's "C" code repository that will do the
conversion. (Thanks, Tom.)
A pox upon leap years, un-leap centuries, re-leap 4th centuries,
Roman Numerals, modulus 7 weeks that do not align with the year boundary,
months with no regular modulus structure, and no year 0.
Who sold us this?
Makes you appreciate the decimal time "Star Date" system used on Startrek.
--- Graham
==
On 5/27/2013 9:56 AM, Miguel Barbosa Gonçalves wrote:
Hi Bob!
On 27 May 2013 14:56, Bob Camp lists@rtty.us wrote:
Hi
Correct answer:
I don't think there is such a beast. Once you get away from the radio
controlled (WWVB etc) clocks the cost goes up quickly.
I don't understand why a microprocessor with an Ethernet controller and a 7
segment display would cost so much to manufacture... I think I'll build my
own.
Also correct, but a bit of a joke answer:
Raspberry PI driving your television set. Alternatively make the Pi feed
control signals to a hacked normal clock.
Good joke :-) I imagine the electricity bill at the end of the month.
I would like to have a clock sync with my super precise stratum 1 servers
:-) what's the point in having them if I can see the time anywhere? :-)
Cheers,
Miguel
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
Hi
SNTP probably is ok if you are running against an NTP server hardwired on a local LAN. Running it through a home modem and out onto the internet likely isn't going to be as good as a full blown NTP stack. You could quite easily get enough lag / delay to get into the ~ 100 to 200 ms region that you can see on a clock.
Bob
On May 27, 2013, at 2:33 PM, Graham / KE9H TIMENUT@austin.rr.com wrote:
Miguel:
If you are going to build your own, I would recommend you start with
something like the Microchip PIC32 Ethernet Starter Kit. Comes
with a free GCC C/C++ compiler and an Ethernet stack.
I happened to have one for another project, that already had a
four line serial LCD display hooked to it, as well as a serial port
command line interface running
Since I was already familiar with the Ethernet Stack that comes with
the Starter Kit, all it took was turning on the SNTP function in the
stack, and writing about ten lines of C code to get it running.
One update of NTP sourced UTC Hours-Minutes-Seconds time on the
display per command line request. (Anything more complicated is left as
an exercise for the student.)
That was after about an hour's research to find out the time
format that NTP uses (seconds since Jan 1, 1900) and the
(different) time format that UNIX uses (seconds since Jan 1, 1970).
And how they both deal with leap-seconds since their
epoch started.
Another hour of time figuring out how to convert that to
today's Hours, minutes, and seconds. But that is easy,
once it (finally) sinks in how to work with an epoch.
Now, the real fun begins when you decide that you might
want to convert NTP or UNIX time to Day of Week, Month,
Calendar Year, Day of Year, Week of year, and
adjustments for local time zone, with daylight savings time.
That was worth about four hours research and going to bed with
a head-ache. Learned all about "Julian Day" and "Modified
Julian Day", which it turns out has nothing to do with
the Julian Calendar. (Did you know that time started at high noon
on January 1, 4713 BC. ?) Finally discovered a code snippet
in Tom Van Baak's "C" code repository that will do the
conversion. (Thanks, Tom.)
A pox upon leap years, un-leap centuries, re-leap 4th centuries,
Roman Numerals, modulus 7 weeks that do not align with the year boundary,
months with no regular modulus structure, and no year 0.
Who sold us this?
Makes you appreciate the decimal time "Star Date" system used on Startrek.
--- Graham
==
On 5/27/2013 9:56 AM, Miguel Barbosa Gonçalves wrote:
Hi Bob!
On 27 May 2013 14:56, Bob Camp lists@rtty.us wrote:
Hi
Correct answer:
I don't think there is such a beast. Once you get away from the radio
controlled (WWVB etc) clocks the cost goes up quickly.
I don't understand why a microprocessor with an Ethernet controller and a 7
segment display would cost so much to manufacture... I think I'll build my
own.
Also correct, but a bit of a joke answer:
Raspberry PI driving your television set. Alternatively make the Pi feed
control signals to a hacked normal clock.
Good joke :-) I imagine the electricity bill at the end of the month.
I would like to have a clock sync with my super precise stratum 1 servers
:-) what's the point in having them if I can see the time anywhere? :-)
Cheers,
Miguel
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
And don't get me started on Unix timekeeping...
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com
[mailto:time-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On Behalf Of Graham / KE9H
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 11:34
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] NTP Clock suggestions?
Miguel:
If you are going to build your own, I would recommend you start with
something like the Microchip PIC32 Ethernet Starter Kit. Comes
with a free GCC C/C++ compiler and an Ethernet stack.
I happened to have one for another project, that already had a
four line serial LCD display hooked to it, as well as a serial port
command line interface running
Since I was already familiar with the Ethernet Stack that comes with
the Starter Kit, all it took was turning on the SNTP function in the
stack, and writing about ten lines of C code to get it running.
One update of NTP sourced UTC Hours-Minutes-Seconds time on the
display per command line request. (Anything more complicated
is left as
an exercise for the student.)
That was after about an hour's research to find out the time
format that NTP uses (seconds since Jan 1, 1900) and the
(different) time format that UNIX uses (seconds since Jan 1, 1970).
And how they both deal with leap-seconds since their
epoch started.
Another hour of time figuring out how to convert that to
today's Hours, minutes, and seconds. But that is easy,
once it (finally) sinks in how to work with an epoch.
Now, the real fun begins when you decide that you might
want to convert NTP or UNIX time to Day of Week, Month,
Calendar Year, Day of Year, Week of year, and
adjustments for local time zone, with daylight savings time.
That was worth about four hours research and going to bed with
a head-ache. Learned all about "Julian Day" and "Modified
Julian Day", which it turns out has nothing to do with
the Julian Calendar. (Did you know that time started at high noon
on January 1, 4713 BC. ?) Finally discovered a code snippet
in Tom Van Baak's "C" code repository that will do the
conversion. (Thanks, Tom.)
A pox upon leap years, un-leap centuries, re-leap 4th centuries,
Roman Numerals, modulus 7 weeks that do not align with the
year boundary,
months with no regular modulus structure, and no year 0.
Who sold us this?
Makes you appreciate the decimal time "Star Date" system used
on Startrek.
--- Graham
==
On 5/27/2013 9:56 AM, Miguel Barbosa Gonçalves wrote:
Hi Bob!
On 27 May 2013 14:56, Bob Camp lists@rtty.us wrote:
Hi
Correct answer:
I don't think there is such a beast. Once you get away
from the radio
controlled (WWVB etc) clocks the cost goes up quickly.
I don't understand why a microprocessor with an Ethernet
controller and a 7
segment display would cost so much to manufacture... I
think I'll build my
own.
Also correct, but a bit of a joke answer:
Raspberry PI driving your television set. Alternatively
make the Pi feed
control signals to a hacked normal clock.
Good joke :-) I imagine the electricity bill at the end of
the month.
I would like to have a clock sync with my super precise
stratum 1 servers
:-) what's the point in having them if I can see the time
anywhere? :-)
and follow the instructions there.
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to
https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
A useful reference to own: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0521702380/ref=mw_dp_sim_ss1?pi=SL500_SY125
--
Kenton A. Hoover
kenton@nemersonhoover.org
+14158305843
On Monday, May 27, 2013 at 11:59, DaveH wrote:
And don't get me started on Unix timekeeping...
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com
[mailto:time-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On Behalf Of Graham / KE9H
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 11:34
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] NTP Clock suggestions?
Miguel:
If you are going to build your own, I would recommend you start with
something like the Microchip PIC32 Ethernet Starter Kit. Comes
with a free GCC C/C++ compiler and an Ethernet stack.
I happened to have one for another project, that already had a
four line serial LCD display hooked to it, as well as a serial port
command line interface running
Since I was already familiar with the Ethernet Stack that comes with
the Starter Kit, all it took was turning on the SNTP function in the
stack, and writing about ten lines of C code to get it running.
One update of NTP sourced UTC Hours-Minutes-Seconds time on the
display per command line request. (Anything more complicated
is left as
an exercise for the student.)
That was after about an hour's research to find out the time
format that NTP uses (seconds since Jan 1, 1900) and the
(different) time format that UNIX uses (seconds since Jan 1, 1970).
And how they both deal with leap-seconds since their
epoch started.
Another hour of time figuring out how to convert that to
today's Hours, minutes, and seconds. But that is easy,
once it (finally) sinks in how to work with an epoch.
Now, the real fun begins when you decide that you might
want to convert NTP or UNIX time to Day of Week, Month,
Calendar Year, Day of Year, Week of year, and
adjustments for local time zone, with daylight savings time.
That was worth about four hours research and going to bed with
a head-ache. Learned all about "Julian Day" and "Modified
Julian Day", which it turns out has nothing to do with
the Julian Calendar. (Did you know that time started at high noon
on January 1, 4713 BC. ?) Finally discovered a code snippet
in Tom Van Baak's "C" code repository that will do the
conversion. (Thanks, Tom.)
A pox upon leap years, un-leap centuries, re-leap 4th centuries,
Roman Numerals, modulus 7 weeks that do not align with the
year boundary,
months with no regular modulus structure, and no year 0.
Who sold us this?
Makes you appreciate the decimal time "Star Date" system used
on Startrek.
--- Graham
==
On 5/27/2013 9:56 AM, Miguel Barbosa Gonçalves wrote:
Hi Bob!
On 27 May 2013 14:56, Bob Camp lists@rtty.us wrote:
Hi
Correct answer:
I don't think there is such a beast. Once you get away
from the radio
controlled (WWVB etc) clocks the cost goes up quickly.
I don't understand why a microprocessor with an Ethernet
controller and a 7
segment display would cost so much to manufacture... I
think I'll build my
own.
Also correct, but a bit of a joke answer:
Raspberry PI driving your television set. Alternatively
make the Pi feed
control signals to a hacked normal clock.
Good joke :-) I imagine the electricity bill at the end of
the month.
I would like to have a clock sync with my super precise
stratum 1 servers
:-) what's the point in having them if I can see the time
anywhere? :-)
and follow the instructions there.
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to
https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
Some time back I purchased from Stanley Reynolds the necessary boards
for the Riley DMTD. I'm now looking at what's necessary to build out
these boards and the Mini Circuits parts are far and away the most
expensive parts, due principally to the 10 part minimum on several of
the items.
I'm wondering if there are any others on the list who are contemplating
the Riley DMTD and might wish to split a Mini Circuits parts order to
ease the pain?
I guess I should also ask if an alternate DMTD in the works and if so,
where does it stand at this time?
Thanks,
Bob Darby