[time-nuts] NTP Clock suggestions?

DaveH info at blackmountainforge.com
Mon May 27 14:59:33 EDT 2013


And don't get me started on Unix timekeeping...

Dave 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com 
> [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at 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 at 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
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