[time-nuts] Looking for off-the-shelf device to timestamp multiple PPS in...

Kevin Rosenberg kevin at rosenberg.net
Wed Sep 28 19:00:05 UTC 2011


On Sep 28, 2011, at 12:34 PM, Chris Albertson wrote:
> There are much cheaper counters on eBay the HP5328 goes for $100 more or less.

That's a nice price. I hadn't looked at that unit, just the PM8660/B (since 
I own one) and the 53230A (since I want one).

I'll be glad to read the manual for the HP5328, but for the above two
counters, I couldn't find a way to have the unit continuously counting
which report the period of every PPS pulse. There'd be some delay while
the gate re-arms it. Is there something I'm  missing? I'd love to use an 
off-the-shelf counter so my son can do all the work himself. Though, 
perhaps I'll need to help him with his hardware skills.

>> 5) ... I haven't
>> enough experience running FreeBSD  or Linux on ARM to know how well
>> this will work for me.
> 
> All those billions of Android phones and tablets are all Linux on Arm
> if you look inside.

Sure, I meant I didn't know how much work it'd take for me to get the
PPS API kernel feature working an ARM platform or if I'd have to
try a few difference development boards to get PPS working on the board.

> One other option.  What about a PicTic II?  It is basically you micro
> processor option but it's less work because someone else has already
> written the uP software and made a PCB..  But they cost $50 to build
> and the HP5328 counter is in that same price range.

PicTic II is an interesting idea, I haven't look at it's features
in close to two years, so I should revisit it!

Thanks for your ideas, Chris!

Kevin




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