[time-nuts] Thunderbolt GPSDO

Hal Murray hmurray at megapathdsl.net
Tue Feb 13 20:05:01 EST 2007


> 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.






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