[time-nuts] Heol Design N024 GPS receiver
Sean Gallagher
sean at wetstonetech.com
Mon Jun 15 14:31:02 EDT 2015
So we finally got in our test Heol N024 GPS replacement board for the
Trimble Ace III that ran into the 1995 rollover and most notably
affected just about everyone with a Datum/Symmetricom/Microsemi TymServe
2100.
As Olivier Descoubes (the contact at Heol) posted I can confirm that
their firmware has corrected both the 1995 rollover and the 1 second UTC
offset that has been plaguing us since winter. I tried it in the oldest
Firmware that is the backup on the 2100 in case of failure (v 2.84 I
think) along with versions 3.1 and currently running back up on 4.1.
Also the board works with the Datum BC635pci cards as well for anyone
that uses those.
Finally I am getting good time again to my servers without a mad
scientist setup going on.
Full disclaimer though the price has increased. The original N024 boards
were I believe 95 euro and are still available as such. However these
will not work with the TS2100 or bc635pci cards. It looked like it was
getting the location data right when I looked through some settings on
the 2100 but it won't translate the timing data right. The V2 has the
updated firmware that corrects the issues and works properly but the
price has gone up to something like 245 euro. Plus it's shipping from
France so you're looking at over $300 for this solution. This was due to
them putting in about 2-3 weeks of development and they also purchased a
2100 for testing. They hope that after they sell some units and offset
those costs they can lower the price gradually down again. I must say
however that this $300 solution for us is far superior to the $7,000
3xxx series replacement solution that Microsemi was trying to sell me.
Also Heol is stating a 1 year hardware warranty and supporting the
software to 2035. I must say that with this support and maybe replacing
my oscillator ( I think the original factory is still in mine) that I
can get years of service out of this still and not break the bank.
Respectfully,
Sean Gallagher
Malware Analyst
571-340-3475
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