[time-nuts] Designing an embedded precision GPS time server

Chris Caudle chris at chriscaudle.org
Thu Oct 26 17:11:18 EDT 2017


On Wed, October 25, 2017 7:53 pm, Nick Sayer via time-nuts wrote:
> I am considering a new project based on its cousin, the ATSAME70.

What is a reasonable cost target for that at the volumes you could
produce?  Coming up with something that is a better value than BeagleBone
Black at any kind of hobby project volume seems difficult.

The processor you mentioned has a Cortex-M7 at 300MHz.  BBBB has a
Cortex-A8 running at 1GHz plus a Cortex-M processor available as a
coprocessor. Peripheral set is pretty comparable, and you can buy BBB at
retail for $50 which gets you the faster higher class processor, 512MB of
DRAM and 4GB of flash.  It runs linux right out of the box so you
basically  power it on and have NTP running.

> Anybody have any ideas or suggestions along these lines?

On my list of projects to work on is a cape for BeagleBone Black that
takes 10MHz and 1PPS inputs along with a couple of RS232 converters for
the UARTs so you can connect a GPSDO to a BBB to make a time server.  In
my estimation that seemed like the best return on effort.

-- 
Chris Caudle




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