[time-nuts] Timepod

Martyn Smith martyn at ptsyst.com
Thu Mar 17 21:04:01 EDT 2016


Hello,

I'm just about to order a timepod at $9400 from Micro Semi.

Does any one have a used one for sale?

Best Regards

Martyn 

Precision Test Systems UK & USA Contact Details:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: How to run Lady Heather under Windows10 (Bob Camp)
2. Re: How to run Lady Heather under Windows10 (David J Taylor)
3. Re: Serial-Ethernet (Tom Van Baak)
4. Re: CERN hosted 9th White Rabbit workshop,presentations
online (Javier Serrano)
5. Re: Framework for simulation of oscillators (jimlux)
6. Re: How to run Lady Heather under Windows10 (Ken Winterling)
7. Re: How to run Lady Heather under Windows10 (Stephen Tompsett)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 08:24:23 -0400
From: Bob Camp
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement

Subject: Re: [time-nuts] How to run Lady Heather under Windows10
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Hi

There are multiple possible issues:

1) Most (like 99.99%) new laptops do not have a com port, that gets you to some sort of external port
2) USB is pretty common, but as mentioned in another thread, ethernet and bluetooth are also quite possible.
3) Since it is an external bus, the connection it’s self may be down (bad cable / hub / out of range / turned off …)
4) Assuming the connection is there, you now need drivers. They have to match both the device and the OS

Yes, this is “fun”. It’s hardly restricted to serial ports or to any one OS. My $6 Chinese clone programming adapters
just stopped working when the FPGA vendor upgraded their software. Oddly enough, the vendor’s $300 adapter still
works fine with the new drivers. Since I didn’t pay $294 for the IP protection when I bought my clones … that’s the way
it works. Hopefully there will be new clones along “real soon now”.

If your (a wild guess) USB serial adapter is not being recognized, I’d check the driver status in your OS. Google is
quite helpful coming up with multiple screen shots of how to get to the right screen for just about any OS version on
the planet. That screen will show you if the driver is installed and what com port the driver decided to use. The port number
is a driver (not os) decision in many cases. It could just as easily be Com56 as Com1. The drivers do this so they don’t
“duplicate” a previous assignment.

Lots of fun…

Bob


> On Mar 17, 2016, at 5:34 AM, Neville Michie wrote:
>
> Hi,
> a new laptop and a new problem,
> I can not find COM1, and the slash command
> on Lady Heather provokes a response that spaces and slash
> marks are illegal in file names.
> Any ideas?
>
> thanks,
>
> Neville Michie
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.



------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 13:56:28 -0000
From: "David J Taylor"
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement"

Subject: Re: [time-nuts] How to run Lady Heather under Windows10
Message-ID: <6de1aad4109c44c98aa5585beefa56da at alta>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="utf-8";
reply-type=response

NEville

Thoughts

1)Get rid of WIN10 ...and instal WIN7 on the new laptop

2) Are you running a USB to COM port adapter? Could be a WIN 10 driver
problem

3) as far as I know Windows in any version wont allow SLASH in a file
name. I am not familiar with Lady Heather so I do not understand the use
of "file name" and "send command" in the same sentence in this context?
IS the file name embedded in the command?

I am so fed up with WIN 10 that I may finally breakdown and go through
the learning curve on LINUX

Dave
Manuals at ArtekManuals.com
www.ArtekManuals.com
======================================

Dave,

Agreed on (3).

I've put together a page of notes on Win-10 here:

http://www.satsignal.eu/software/Win-10-notes.html

Yes, there are a few issues, but I've seen nothing major with hardware or
software. You're welcome to ask in case I have seen the same issue.

Cheers,
David
--
SatSignal Software - Quality software written to your requirements
Web: http://www.satsignal.eu
Email: david-taylor at blueyonder.co.uk
Twitter: @gm8arv



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 07:00:35 -0700
From: "Tom Van Baak"
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement"

Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Serial-Ethernet
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain;charset="utf-8"

Hi Joe,

The "TI" value reported through SCPI by a HP GPSDO is the current "time interval"; the phase error within the closed loop. So this is PLL data, not clock data. As such, double-difference ADEV statistics selected in that plot of yours are somewhere between misleading and invalid.

The TI value should wiggle around by many ns to tens of ns. What's interesting are the peak-peak or RMS value. What you can do is plot the TI value as a time series, or summarize it by looking at RMS, or even RMS over time. There may even be specialized PLL statistics to apply in this case, or FFT. Sometimes TDEV or tau*ADEV(tau) is useful to expose periodic variations.

But the clue is that your ADEV (MDEV, etc.) plots all just head straight down into the -13's and -14's. If you ran it longer it would continue going into the -15's and -16's and pretty soon it would look like you have the best frequency standard in the world! That's what happens when ADEV is used on (bounded) PLL data instead of (unbounded) clock data. If not wrong, at least it's misleading, especially to newcomers to T&F metrology.

As to why it's included in Z38xx? Or Heather as well? There was a time when the authors of both those tools misunderstood what it means to measure a GPSDO. They confused actual measured performance of the 10 MHz BNC frequency output compared to an independent frequency standard with the self-measured internal phase locking performance of the PLL. This mistake rarely happens with Stable32 or Timelab.

However there is one case, with LH and a TBolt, where its ADEV graph is valid. If you put the TBolt in the state where GPS is active but disciplining is disabled, then the TI values really do represent a valid measurement between an independent reference (GPS) and a clock (the now free-running OCXO). In this case the ADEV plots in LH are perfectly valid. IMHO, this feature should be in every GPSDO, but I think it's unique to the TBolt.

/tvb

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Gray"
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement"
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 8:00 PM
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Serial-Ethernet


Yes, I should have realized that it wasn't comparing the GPSDO against
anything. So, what is the point of this graph in Z38xx?




------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 15:35:56 +0100
From: Javier Serrano
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement

Subject: Re: [time-nuts] CERN hosted 9th White Rabbit workshop,
presentations online
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Thanks for the kind words Achim!

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 12:25 PM, Achim Vollhardt
wrote:
> CERN has hosted this week the 9th White Rabbit workshop.

Actually our friends at Nkhef [1] hosted the event in Amsterdam.
Nikhef is a really cool institute. In the same building you have
people working on neutrino detectors to be installed at the bottom of
the Mediterranean (KM3NeT) , the Cherenkov Telescope Array, the Square
Kilometre Array and Gravitational wave detection. The lab tour was one
of the highlights of the event. I recommend it to anybody going to
Amsterdam.

> White Rabbit is a open hardware fiber-based network which allows for
> precise (sub-ns) time transfer over fiber lengths of up to 10km (and
> even more) between attached nodes.

Indeed, 10km were our initial specs. Then through the magic of open
source and some very gifted individuals, WR specs are being stretched
in many directions. The longest link to date is the one done by fellow
time-nut Anders Wallin [2], around 1000km!

Cheers,

Javier

[1] https://www.nikhef.nl/en/
[2] http://www.ohwr.org/attachments/4271/4_WR-workshop_2016_wallin.pdf


------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 06:20:00 -0700
From: jimlux
To: time-nuts at febo.com
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Framework for simulation of oscillators
Message-ID: <56eaaf00.905 at earthlink.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed

On 3/17/16 2:56 AM, Attila Kinali wrote:

>
> As I am pretty sure not the first one to attempt something like this,
> I would like to ask whether someone has already some software framework
> around for this kind of simulation?
>
> If not, does someone have pointers how to write realistic oscillator models
> for this kind of short and long term simulation?


what do you want the output of the model to be? Samples of the sine
wave, time of each cycle, frequency at discrete intervals?



------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 10:24:00 -0400
From: Ken Winterling
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement

Subject: Re: [time-nuts] How to run Lady Heather under Windows10
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Neville,

I set up a shortcut to run Lady Heather on my Windows10 system, an old IBM
ThinkPad. Here is the exact "target" command line I use in the shortcut to
Lady Heather:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Heather\heather.exe" /4

Be sure to use the quotes exactly as they appear above before "C: and after
.exe". The /4 specifies COM4 on my system.

If everything on our systems were identical your shortcut target would be:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Heather\heather.exe" /1

Use Device Manager (right click the Window icon in the lower left corner of
your screen and select Device Manager). Look under Ports (COM & LPT) to
see what is on your system.

Good luck and keep us posted!

Ken
WA2LBI

On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 9:56 AM, David J Taylor
uk> wrote:

> NEville
>
> Thoughts
>
> 1)Get rid of WIN10 ...and instal WIN7 on the new laptop
>
> 2) Are you running a USB to COM port adapter? Could be a WIN 10 driver
> problem
>
> 3) as far as I know Windows in any version wont allow SLASH in a file
> name. I am not familiar with Lady Heather so I do not understand the use
> of "file name" and "send command" in the same sentence in this context?
> IS the file name embedded in the command?
>
> I am so fed up with WIN 10 that I may finally breakdown and go through
> the learning curve on LINUX
>
> Dave
> Manuals at ArtekManuals.com
> www.ArtekManuals.com
> ======================================
>
> Dave,
>
> Agreed on (3).
>
> I've put together a page of notes on Win-10 here:
>
> http://www.satsignal.eu/software/Win-10-notes.html
>
> Yes, there are a few issues, but I've seen nothing major with hardware or
> software. You're welcome to ask in case I have seen the same issue.
>
> Cheers,
> David
> --
> SatSignal Software - Quality software written to your requirements
> Web: http://www.satsignal.eu
> Email: david-taylor at blueyonder.co.uk
> Twitter: @gm8arv
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to
> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.
>


------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 14:41:33 +0000
From: Stephen Tompsett
To: time-nuts at febo.com
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] How to run Lady Heather under Windows10
Message-ID: <56eac21d.2010702 at tompsett.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

No problems with Windows 10.

* If you are using USB-serial adapters use FTDI based devices and turn
off 'Serial Enumeration' in the advanced properties in Device Manger
- stops the data being used by Windows as Mouse data. This is also a
good idea for Win7 and earlier.
* Use a short-cut to run the program e.g. with the device attached to
COM7 I use:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Heather\heather.exe" /gb /7

This will also work happily from a command line.



On 17/03/2016 13:56, David J Taylor wrote:
> NEville
>
> Thoughts
>
> 1)Get rid of WIN10 ...and instal WIN7 on the new laptop
>
> 2) Are you running a USB to COM port adapter? Could be a WIN 10 driver
> problem
>
> 3) as far as I know Windows in any version wont allow SLASH in a file
> name. I am not familiar with Lady Heather so I do not understand the use
> of "file name" and "send command" in the same sentence in this context?
> IS the file name embedded in the command?
>
> I am so fed up with WIN 10 that I may finally breakdown and go through
> the learning curve on LINUX
>
> Dave
> Manuals at ArtekManuals.com
> www.ArtekManuals.com
> ======================================
>
> Dave,
>
> Agreed on (3).
>
> I've put together a page of notes on Win-10 here:
>
> http://www.satsignal.eu/software/Win-10-notes.html
>
> Yes, there are a few issues, but I've seen nothing major with hardware
> or software. You're welcome to ask in case I have seen the same issue.
>
> Cheers,
> David

--
Stephen Tompsett



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