[time-nuts] GPSDO standard interface?

Chris Albertson albertson.chris at gmail.com
Wed Jun 25 21:31:10 EDT 2014


On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 5:10 PM, Bob Stewart <bob at evoria.net> wrote:

>  Is there an accepted standard interface for GPSDOs, or is that a murky
> Microsoft-esque world of patents and lawyers?


No.  There is no standard and many (most?) don't have any kind of user
interface at all, just the 10MHz output BNC connector.

The simple thing would be to add some kind of LED that shows activity and a
second LED that indicates a lock within some acceptable limit.

The Trimble unit is both a GPS receiver and a GPSDO so it has the kind of
serial interface you'd expect on a GPS receiver.It would not make sense to
copy this because your GPSDO will already have a GPS receiver that will be
sending status and accepting commands.

One is you likely do NOT want is to force the user to have to connect a PC
in order to operate the user interface.  Much better to use a self
contained $5 LCD display.  It is very easy to add a text-only LCD to most
any project that uses a micro controller and it is not much harder to add a
graphical LCD of the type used on older cell phones.  These can do graphics.



-- 

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California


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