[time-nuts] Logging the grid frequency....

[Chris Albertson]

People have measured AC mains period (and hence frequency) with very
simple devices.  The best is just an AC plug-in power cube and a diode
to square the sine wave then this is connected directly to a DCD input
on a serial port.  The Linix PPS driver will time tage each pulse with
a nanosecond timer that is good really only to about two microseconds.
  This is better than good enough.   All you need is a computer and a
few bucks worth of parts.

Here is one setup using DCD as the sensor
http://wwwhome.cs.utwente.nl/~ptdeboer/misc/mains.html

The newels PPS software will do the logging now.  What you are left
with is a file that lists the time of each zero crossing.  You get 60
new lines of text every second.



-- 

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California