Radio time signal PCI cards?.

Hi Folks
I have just been to the BAA workshop meeting held at Milton Keynes and
attended a very interesting talk/demonstration on Astrometry and the use
of Astrometrica by Nick James.
Nick states that for any useful Astrometry to be undertaken a very
accurate pc clock is essential and someone suggested a PCI card that
could synchronise the pc clock accurately via radio waves (from Rugby I
think !) similar to the every day alarm clocks that are now available
but no one seemed to know if and where such a card would be otainable
from and I wondered if anyone in the group could help with this.
Cheers
Steve
--
Please remove `nothanks` if replying.

"Steve" wrote in message
newsRu0c.2210$zu.303@newsfe1-win...

Nick states that for any useful Astrometry to be undertaken a very
accurate pc clock is essential and someone suggested a PCI card that
could synchronise the pc clock accurately via radio waves (from Rugby I
think !) similar to the every day alarm clocks that are now available
but no one seemed to know if and where such a card would be otainable
from and I wondered if anyone in the group could help with this.

I have an old Quancom ISA card that receives the signal from Darmstadt (its
coverage extends to the UK). It is Windows only though. I see they now
make PCI cards too: http://www.quancom.de/

I have heard of people rigging up these boards for NTP as a reference clock
using Linux, so there may well be a Linux driver kicking around somewhere.

Tom wrote:

"Steve" wrote in message
newsRu0c.2210$zu.303@newsfe1-win...

Nick states that for any useful Astrometry to be undertaken a very
accurate pc clock is essential and someone suggested a PCI card that
could synchronise the pc clock accurately via radio waves (from Rugby I
think !) similar to the every day alarm clocks that are now available
but no one seemed to know if and where such a card would be otainable
from and I wondered if anyone in the group could help with this.

I have an old Quancom ISA card that receives the signal from Darmstadt (its
coverage extends to the UK). It is Windows only though. I see they now
make PCI cards too: http://www.quancom.de/

I have heard of people rigging up these boards for NTP as a reference clock
using Linux, so there may well be a Linux driver kicking around somewhere.

There may be a cheaper alternative, no I dont know if it has a version for Linux, and that is DS
Clock, a free software which is a resident in memory and gets signals from any atomic clock on the
net (I use Washington Naval Obs, USA). This keeps my PCs clock in time with the rest of the world,
and I have also compared it to my Radio Clock (via RS232) and they are within a couple of
milliseconds of each other AFAICS.

http://www.dualitysoft.com/dsclock/

hth

DH

"Steve" wrote in message
newsRu0c.2210$zu.303@newsfe1-win...
Hi Folks
I have just been to the BAA workshop meeting held at Milton Keynes and
attended a very interesting talk/demonstration on Astrometry and the use
of Astrometrica by Nick James.
Nick states that for any useful Astrometry to be undertaken a very
accurate pc clock is essential and someone suggested a PCI card that
could synchronise the pc clock accurately via radio waves (from Rugby I
think !) similar to the every day alarm clocks that are now available
but no one seemed to know if and where such a card would be otainable
from and I wondered if anyone in the group could help with this.
Cheers
Steve
--
Please remove `nothanks` if replying.

You should be able to download PC clock syncing software that simply sits in
the system tray and updates the clock form time to time. Some software
applications that require accurate timekeeping, allow internet updating
themselves.

Try a google for system tray atomic clock it gave me a list of quite a few.

Martin

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 08:49:29 GMT, David Harris
wrote:

http://www.dualitysoft.com/dsclock/

DS Clock is a nice bit of software - been running it here for years. I
like the way the clock can be positioned and formatted the way I like
it.

But if running XP you can just use XP's own synching - right click on
the taskbar clock, choose "Adjust Date/Time", click on the Internet
Time tab, then select automatically update.

In the server add tick.usno.navy.mil for the US Naval Observatory.

HTH

Noz
--
Email nozza underscore wales at yahoo co uk

In message , David Harris
writes
Tom wrote:

"Steve" wrote in message
newsRu0c.2210$zu.303@newsfe1-win...

Nick states that for any useful Astrometry to be undertaken a very
accurate pc clock is essential and someone suggested a PCI card that
could synchronise the pc clock accurately via radio waves (from Rugby I
think !) similar to the every day alarm clocks that are now available
but no one seemed to know if and where such a card would be otainable
from and I wondered if anyone in the group could help with this.

I have an old Quancom ISA card that receives the signal from Darmstadt (its
coverage extends to the UK). It is Windows only though. I see they now
make PCI cards too: http://www.quancom.de/

I have heard of people rigging up these boards for NTP as a reference clock
using Linux, so there may well be a Linux driver kicking around somewhere.

There may be a cheaper alternative, no I dont know if it has a version
for Linux, and that is DS
Clock, a free software which is a resident in memory and gets signals
from any atomic clock on the
net (I use Washington Naval Obs, USA). This keeps my PCs clock in time
with the rest of the world,
and I have also compared it to my Radio Clock (via RS232) and they are
within a couple of
milliseconds of each other AFAICS.

http://www.dualitysoft.com/dsclock/

I am surprised that it is as good as that. Propagation delays on the
internet can be quite variable to locations over the pond.

There must be someone does a USB time receiver for MSF Rugby or DCF77.
Cheap receivers are limited to ~0.5mS pulse accuracy by design.

Beware of using digital terrestrial radio for anything critical - time
signals on that can be out by a variable amount and sometimes by more
than a second.

Regards,
--
Martin Brown

Thanks for the replies guys. I`ll give DS Clock a try.
Steve

Nozza wrote:
In the server add tick.usno.navy.mil for the US Naval Observatory.

Presumably you then need to do a traceroute or ping to ascertain the
time delay between USNO and your 'pooter?

Best,
Stephen

Remove footfrommouth to reply

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Martin Brown wrote:

There must be someone does a USB time receiver for MSF Rugby or DCF77.
Cheap receivers are limited to ~0.5mS pulse accuracy by design.


MAPLIN sell ( or perhaps used to) a MSF radio and decoder that put out
the time as a serial data stream, straight into your serial port.

Beware of using digital terrestrial radio for anything critical - time
signals on that can be out by a variable amount and sometimes by more
than a second.


What is the short term accuracy of MSF like ? I am using a GPS Jupiter-T
receiver at the moment on a new project, which has an RMS accuracy of
30 nsec. The output is PPS or 10Khz, as well as NMEA serial. Costs
around 150 quid including the antenna. That is a naked board though, so
anyone else would need an enclosure.

Steve

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
news
In message , David Harris
writes
There may be a cheaper alternative, no I dont know if it has a
version
for Linux, and that is DS
Clock, a free software which is a resident in memory and gets signals
from any atomic clock on the
net (I use Washington Naval Obs, USA). This keeps my PCs clock in
time
with the rest of the world,
and I have also compared it to my Radio Clock (via RS232) and they
are
within a couple of
milliseconds of each other AFAICS.

I am surprised that it is as good as that. Propagation delays on the
internet can be quite variable to locations over the pond.

If the software uses the NTP protocol then I'm led to believe that an
estimate of propagation delay is factored in automatically.

I'm using NISTime32
http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/service/its.htm, which runs in the
background as an 'invisible' task and syncs my PC clock every hour using
NTP. Source code is available.
--
Andrew Urquhart
Reply: http://www.andrewu.co.uk/about/conta...A+uk.sci.astro