Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt GPSDO
I used the "Contact Seller" button and asked him where the units came from.
He confirmed they were from the same E911 box I got mine from. He must of got
that pallet I was trying to get! @#$%
Any ways here are my comments on them all though I'm a newbie at this.
Mine used a +12, two +5 and a -7 VDC. I know the manual says the thunder
bolt requires a -12 but mine had a -7 on it. Maybe the universal power supply in
the box it came with only had a -7 so that is what they used? I built a power
supply from salvaged parts, all but the negative voltage regulator.
I'm not sure of the power plug connection. It is a 7 pin(?) in line
connector. I would try to include those if possible.
The GPS in is a "F" type female. Mine had a short jumper with F male and TNC
female so that is what I used.
The data out is Trimble propriety and you have to use their software. It's
free off their website and I downloaded 2. The first one monitors the GPS
functions, the other sync your PC clock.
After I got it set up I used the software to enter a mode ( the name escapes
me) that lets it finds it self. The 10 Mhz appeared to be locked up in about
15~20 minutes and after about an hour I figured out you then had to tell it
to remember where it was. After that from power up it takes 4 minutes to lock.
I have mine for a few weeks now and I use it to sync a 10 Ghz transverter.
I've only made 1 contact and he said it was right on the money frequency wise
and did not drift. I since have been searching for beacons but only found 1
so far. An activity day is coming up in a few weeks and hope to get more use
out of it.
Sorry if the email is a little drawn out, but I'm a newbie. If any one has
any questions feel free.
Oh, and in case any one is wondering. I'm in no way connected with the
seller. I just recognized the unit and thought I share my experience with one. I
have tried to find more but so far no luck.
Chris
Mine used a +12, two +5 and a -7 VDC. I know the manual says the
thunder bolt requires a -12 but mine had a -7 on it
Is the -12 used for anything other than driving the RS-232 signals? I expect
that would work with almost anything.
The data out is Trimble propriety and you have to use their software.
It's free off their website and I downloaded 2.
ntp has a refclock module that talks to some Trimble units. Looks like gpsd
has Trimble support too. I don't know if they talk to this particular model,
but there is at least some readily available code to look at if anybody wants
to write their own.
--
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.
Tell me more about NTP and GPSD?
I seem to remember downloding something that was suppose to translate Trimbles messages to standard NEMA data but gave up trying to make it work.
-----Original Message-----
From: hmurray@megapathdsl.net
To: time-nuts@febo.com
Sent: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt GPSDO
Mine used a +12, two +5 and a -7 VDC. I know the manual says the
thunder bolt requires a -12 but mine had a -7 on it
Is the -12 used for anything other than driving the RS-232 signals? I expect
that would work with almost anything.
The data out is Trimble propriety and you have to use their software.
It's free off their website and I downloaded 2.
ntp has a refclock module that talks to some Trimble units. Looks like gpsd
has Trimble support too. I don't know if they talk to this particular model,
but there is at least some readily available code to look at if anybody wants
to write their own.
--
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.
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Tell me more about NTP and GPSD?
I seem to remember downloding something that was suppose to
translate Trimbles messages to standard NEMA data but gave up trying
to make it work.
All I was trying to say is that any reasonably determined hacker should be
able to get something working. There is code out there you can copy.
I haven't worked with any Trimble gear.
I've only used gpsd a little bit. The code I looked at was good, even if I
didn't study it enough to understand much of it.
I was trying to debug some code talking to Garmin USB system and I wasn't
getting anywhere. gpsd talked to it just fine so that told me the hardware
and kernel were working. (or would work if you used the right magic) With
that as a hint, I found the bug in my code.
gpsd is primarily interested in navigation. It provides a clean API to many
different types of GPS devices. It supports several binary protocols as well
as NMEA, and it knows about various quirks in some NMEA implementations. I
assume the delays and jitter associated with running through a server would
be evil for timing, especially for the geeks on this list. But gpsd might be
handy for getting off the ground.
I haven't looked carefully at the Trimble support in ntp. A quick poke at
google shows some discussion about adding Thunderbolt support, but I don't
see it in the latest source code.
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/drivers/driver29.html
I'm willing to help with ntp issues.
--
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.
On Wed, February 14, 2007 2:05, Hal Murray said:
I haven't looked carefully at the Trimble support in ntp. A quick poke at
google shows some discussion about adding Thunderbolt support, but I don't
see it in the latest source code.
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/html/drivers/driver29.html
I'm willing to help with ntp issues.
I have used an Acutime2000 with the Palisade driver, it works fine but
lacks (still?) an official maintainer. Though it has Dr Mills support, so
it has resisted attempts to remove it.
There was an astro-guy from Argentine(?) doing some patches to his
Thunderbolt. There were some issues with firmware versions vs
documentation vs Thunderbolt hw versions. Trimble was not able to help out
and at that point they saw no benefit in supporting the maintainance of
their ntp refclock driver. Maybe someone can make the case for them now.
Sven Dietrich who was responsible for the driver left Trimble a long
time ago.
--
Björn
I have used an Acutime2000 with the Palisade driver, it works fine but
lacks (still?) an official maintainer. Though it has Dr Mills support,
so it has resisted attempts to remove it.
Being an "official" maintainer is not a big deal. The main duty is to do a
sanity check and make sure the driver still works.
I'm the official maintainer for the HP driver mostly because I wanted to get
the mods for the X3801A into the official source tree. If the mods for the
Thunderbolt are sane and I get one of them, I'll be glad to be the shepherd
for that driver too.
--
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.