[time-nuts] First success with very simple, very low cost GPSDO, under $8

[Chris Albertson]

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 11:18 PM, Hal Murray <hmurray at megapathdsl.net> wrote:

>
> tvb at LeapSecond.com said:
> > You only need enough bits to cover the worst case OCXO frequency drift or
> > the worst case GPS jitter error, per second. For example, if your OCXO
> stays
> > accurate to 1 ppm it can't possibly drift more than 1 us per second.
> > Similarly, it's a safe assumption that your GPS 1PPS stays within 1 us of
> > correct time. Therefore, the maximum number of 100 ns ticks you will be
> off
> > in any second is +/-10. So even a 8-bit counter is enough. Does this make
> > sense now?
>
> Am I confused or did you forget to add the 2 errors to cover the case when
> they both happen during the same second?  2 us or a count of 20 is still
> tiny, even for an 8 bit counter.
>
>
I think what you are saying is that the error can be expressed in about
five bits.   That is right.

But I still need to count all the cycles in the second and can't just let a
8 or 16 bit counter run free.   The reason is I don't know where the
overflow happens.  Overflow is not in sync with PPS.

OK this might work.   I hope it does as it would allow a bit of code to be
removed.   Let's see...

The system powers up, I enable the 8-bit counter and then assign an
interrupt handler to the PPS and enable the PPS interrupt and I get the
very first PPS interrupt and notice the counter vale is 67.

At the next interrupt the counter is 82

With only these two numbers 67 and 82 and knowing the counter is 8 bits how
to I know the "error" which is the number of cycles different from 5000000.

Or more simply:  "after reading the 82 how to I adjust the DAC?"

If you can spell it out I'll try it.  But I bet you need one more number:
 the count of the times the 8-bit counter overflowed.

OK we might be able to assume a number of overflows because there are tight
bounds on the PPS and OCXO performance.

One problem is I know for sure the overflow rate is not a fixed number per
second.  The 16-bit  timer overflow happens 50000000/65536 times per second
and an 8-bit timer overflows 5000000/256 times per second.  Neather in an
integer.

It might work, then I can get rid of counting overflows.


-- 

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California