[time-nuts] Price of LTE Lite GPSDO vs Trimble Thunderbolt.

Bob Camp kb8tq at n1k.org
Fri Oct 17 21:14:35 EDT 2014


Hi

The question on all of these setups is very much - what do you need?

The T-Bolt was designed to meet some very specific requirements. It’s got an OCXO onboard because of that. 

A 48 hour battery backed Rb does something very different, it’s got different costs associated with it. 

A modern / up to date TCXO based unit makes some compromises to trade off against power and size.

Depending on what your system needs are, each of the first two may uniquely fill a bill that the others will not and can not. If you need to run 120 days on battery, the third will win the contest easily. If you want to run on something other than GPS, number 3 is your choice. 

Cost wise, it all depends on when you bought what. I have Rb’s that cost less than $40 and T-Bolts that cost less than $100. You can still get surplus T-Bolt like objects (OCXO based surplus GPSDO’s) for under $130. I also have some stuff I’ve bought on eBay (and other surplus outlets) over the years that turned out to be less than perfect. Depending on surplus gear in a commercial system would be silly compared to using newly manufactured parts. It all depends on what you need.

Bob

> On Oct 17, 2014, at 5:19 PM, paul swed <paulswedb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Don't want to hijack any discussion and am looking forward to the ebay site
> and ordering. Whats amazing is the power spec in addition to other specs. I
> rechecked the spec 1/16th watt at 3.3V. My RB in the basement draws 24
> watts just idling along and keeping two hefty SLA batteries charged for a
> 48 hour run time if needed.
> 
> I can clearly see the case of careful support system design such that a
> battery set can be charged and even in a power failure run several days on
> a small battery.
> SLA 7 amp was something like 100 plus hours. Bert introduced me to some of
> the Lithium battery technologies that can be had for reasonable cost and
> are small and dense.
> 
> But that said really no need for a battery since restarts are fast...
> Lots to think about. Like LEDs drawing more power then the system and
> sloppy base power supplies wasting power.
> Regards
> Paul
> WB8TSL
> 
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Pete Lancashire <pete at petelancashire.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Sorry to create any  misunderstanding
>> 
>> I was saying thanks to TVB/TAPR for all their effort, and Said/JLT for
>> doing what they did for the group
>> 
>> I was in no way comparing the used Thunderbolts to the LTE Lite.
>> 
>> -pete
>> 
>> On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Jim Sanford <wb4gcs at wb4gcs.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> And, somehow I expect that my LTE-LITE will actually work, which my
>>> thunderbolt never did.  (Very noisy)  It continues to collect dust....
>>> On 10/17/2014 3:49 PM, Pete Lancashire wrote:
>>> 
>>>> First three cheers to LTE for making these available.
>>>> 
>>>> It reminds me when Motorola made a developers kit for the then
>>>> new 68HC11 MCU available for $68.11.
>>>> 
>>>> I know of one design win they got that more then made of their marketing
>>>> costs.
>>>> 
>>>> Another that hit me is with inflation the LTE Lite is not much more then
>>>> what many of us paid for our Thunderbolts.
>>>> 
>>>> For those new to the list ...
>>>> 
>>>> https://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts/2008-May/031100.html
>>>> 
>>>> http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/tapr-tbolt/
>>>> 
>>>> In 2008, $124, the LTE Lite in 2014 $195.
>>>> 
>>>> With 'real' inflation (not the 11% you get online) the $71 difference is
>>>> not much more.
>>>> 
>>>> My two backup Thunderbolts cost me $145 each, just before they hit $200
>>>> then became history.
>>>> 
>>>> Again thanks to Said and JLT !!!!
>>>> 
>>>> -pete
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>>>> 
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