[time-nuts] GPSDO Alternatives

Keenan Tims keenan.tims at gmail.com
Thu Dec 6 15:38:04 UTC 2012


As a lurker, I just want to chime in and say that I for one would love
to see an open-source GPSDO implementation. There are quite a few open
hardware designs out there, but as Bob suggests, all the interesting
bits are tied up in the closed-source software they run. And most of
them are no longer maintained, meaning it's getting hard to find parts.

I've thought on designing a hardware platform to support a GPSDO as
well, but don't have the time-nut or control theory skills (or
equipment) necessary to make the software any good. My hope at the time
was that a build it and they will come approach would solve those
problems, but I haven't had time to make that gamble.

As far as uP choice, Arduino's only saving grace is the pool of existing
'developers' in the amateur community for it - but that's perhaps a big
deal here. It's expensive, doesn't include debug hardware, and is slow
with not many peripherals. I'd second the STM32 ARM Cortex platform, or
suggest MSP430 if you want to stay cheap and slow.

Keenan
VE7XEN

On 2012-12-06 1:28 AM, Chris Albertson wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 2:50 PM, <SAIDJACK at aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> If there is one thing I learned, it is that one is never finished improving
>>  the software. That is why we are time-nuts I guess.
>>
> This is the reason I suggested using the Arduino.  It is so easy to program
> that MANY people will be able to contribute.  That is my goal, a GPSDO that
> can be a "living project" that is not dependent on one or a few experts.
> I'd like to see a budget of well under $100, again so that more people can
> contribute and experiment.
>
> A design that can evolve will have just about any performance people want.
>  So don't worry about if it is 1E-12 or 1E-15.  Just make it transparent
> and easy to understand and modify.
>




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