[time-nuts] Thunderbolt Controllers
On the topic of minimum hardware to use a TBolt, I am interested in observing clock pendulums. WWV is a long way from Australia and only available with good propagation. A GPS receiver will give accurate seconds signals, even if there is some jitter, however it is not easy to identify which second. In the course of a year it is quite believable that a counter may gain or lose one count, what with lightning strikes etc. Minute markers would be sufficient, any clock that can not tell you which minute in the year it is, is not worth observing. The GPS may drop out, so a disciplined oscillator is in order, but how can you get the GPS signals parsed to identify say minute markers without running a computer? All I need is black box which gives seconds pulses and a beep every minute. With a small 4 channel data logger I can then record a clock for a year and its relationship to UTC, temperature and barometric pressure. I would only need a battery backup power supply for the TBolt. cheers, Neville Michie ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt Controllers
The GPS may drop out, so a disciplined oscillator is in order, but how can you get the GPS signals parsed to identify say minute markers without running a computer? There are lots of 8 bit micros that are smart enough to parse the stuff from a TBolt and wiggle a few pins. You have to be happy writing that sort of software. With a small 4 channel data logger I can then record a clock for a year and its relationship to UTC, temperature and barometric pressure. I would only need a battery backup power supply for the TBolt. What are you going to record? How often? What triggers a recording? If you log things with a PC, then it's pretty simple to make your PC track UTC so all you have to do is add a time stamp to each record. Or if your data logger has time but that time isn't good enough, you could make the PC wiggle a pin on the printer port occasionally and make that trigger a recording on the data logger. You would either do it at known times (say top of the hour), or get the PC to record when it does it so you can sort things out later on. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt Controllers
My pendulum produces pulses at a rate of one per second. That signal clocks a latch that samples the less significant bits of my reference oscillator (100kHz or 1MHz) in a counter. The latched values drive a 12 bit D-A converter (a R - 2R chain). So I have a phase signal updated every second, and which resolves 10 or 100 microseconds. The data logger samples this every 10 seconds or so and so logs a graph of drifting phase. The data from the logger can then be used in a spread sheet to analyse periodicity of fluctuations and correlation to barometric pressure and temperature. When barometric pressure and temperature are successfully eliminated by compensating the pendulum, I hope to only have planetary resonances, gravity tides and noise disturbing my clock. Currently I have a 1MHz OCXO driving the system, but it drifts significantly. This is a home brew oven, running at about 40*C, consuming about 250mW, quite easy to back up with a 12V battery. The HOBO data logger has 4 inputs of 0 - 2.5 volts and 12 bit resolution, and it runs for 4 years on a lithium cell. It takes a lot more power to run a computer, and then you have to reboot after each power interruption, and so I have not found it worth while to get a machine just for the project. But the overall check of the system is to compare clock time with UTS once in a while to cover the chance of slipped seconds. At the present time I use WWV when I can find it, but what I would really like is a clock showing UTS in a form that can be compared to a clock. That means one second audible pips and a marker on the minute. Just seeing numbers rolling over on a computer is not good enough to check the timing of the second hand of the clock. You need ear - eye coordinated signals. With WWV I can compare to 1/20th of a second. Although I have programmed systems in a variety of languages in my working life, the only languages that have stuck are Fortran and Basic. All the rest are forgotten after a year or two. I do not wish to start again to learn a new system just for one task, and it is obvious that there are so many micros abroad and none of them is going to be universally useful for future tasks. cheers, Neville Michie On 07/07/2008, at 6:01 PM, Hal Murray wrote: The GPS may drop out, so a disciplined oscillator is in order, but how can you get the GPS signals parsed to identify say minute markers without running a computer? There are lots of 8 bit micros that are smart enough to parse the stuff from a TBolt and wiggle a few pins. You have to be happy writing that sort of software. With a small 4 channel data logger I can then record a clock for a year and its relationship to UTC, temperature and barometric pressure. I would only need a battery backup power supply for the TBolt. What are you going to record? How often? What triggers a recording? If you log things with a PC, then it's pretty simple to make your PC track UTC so all you have to do is add a time stamp to each record. Or if your data logger has time but that time isn't good enough, you could make the PC wiggle a pin on the printer port occasionally and make that trigger a recording on the data logger. You would either do it at known times (say top of the hour), or get the PC to record when it does it so you can sort things out later on. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ time-nuts and follow the instructions there. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers
Yeah, you really do need a display... this is the 21st century... monkeys got better things to do than count blinkenlights (or read a message scrolling across a six character LCD). You need a processor of some sort to decode the TSIP messages. It actually takes a significant amount of code to do it right, so you need a fairly decent one (you could cram it into a small PIC with assembly language, but monkeys got better things to do than all that tedious mucking around in PICspace). Once you have a processor that you can program in a decent language, interfacing it to some sort of LCD display module is rather trivial. Then it can clearly and distinctly tell you the reason your oscillator has gone wobbly. Even a simple two line text display is orders of magnitude better than any blinkenlight. I got 46 seconds of holdover last night. It happened when the two satellites it was tracking got into a bad PDOP/low signal situation and the receiver had to scramble to find something less garbagey to track. That explained that 50ns phase shift in the cesium reference data. It also went through a period of rather high PPS offset (over 20ns, instead of the typical Do you actually need a display? How about a LED or 3. My straw man is: off - no power on - OK blink - trouble You can convey a few bits of information with only one LED. Just encode a small integer in the number of blinks. Code 3 would go: blink, blink, blink, pause bling, blink, blink, ... Yes, it's fun to show more information, but if you really want to see more, you probably want to collect that data so you can track things over weeks or months, and you probably have a PC already doing that. _ Use video conversation to talk face-to-face with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/connect_your_way.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_messenger_video_072008 ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt Controllers
Hi Neville, As a thought, you might want to look at a Basic Stamp from Parallax. These are PIC chips (at least they used to be) coupled with an EEPROM and are programmed in BASIC. Here's a site for some additional data - http://www.parallax.com/Default.aspx?tabid=295 Regards, Bruce Raymond Neville Michie wrote: My pendulum produces pulses at a rate of one per second. That signal clocks a latch that samples the less significant bits of my reference oscillator (100kHz or 1MHz) in a counter. The latched values drive a 12 bit D-A converter (a R - 2R chain). So I have a phase signal updated every second, and which resolves 10 or 100 microseconds. The data logger samples this every 10 seconds or so and so logs a graph of drifting phase. The data from the logger can then be used in a spread sheet to analyse periodicity of fluctuations and correlation to barometric pressure and temperature. When barometric pressure and temperature are successfully eliminated by compensating the pendulum, I hope to only have planetary resonances, gravity tides and noise disturbing my clock. Currently I have a 1MHz OCXO driving the system, but it drifts significantly. This is a home brew oven, running at about 40*C, consuming about 250mW, quite easy to back up with a 12V battery. The HOBO data logger has 4 inputs of 0 - 2.5 volts and 12 bit resolution, and it runs for 4 years on a lithium cell. It takes a lot more power to run a computer, and then you have to reboot after each power interruption, and so I have not found it worth while to get a machine just for the project. But the overall check of the system is to compare clock time with UTS once in a while to cover the chance of slipped seconds. At the present time I use WWV when I can find it, but what I would really like is a clock showing UTS in a form that can be compared to a clock. That means one second audible pips and a marker on the minute. Just seeing numbers rolling over on a computer is not good enough to check the timing of the second hand of the clock. You need ear - eye coordinated signals. With WWV I can compare to 1/20th of a second. Although I have programmed systems in a variety of languages in my working life, the only languages that have stuck are Fortran and Basic. All the rest are forgotten after a year or two. I do not wish to start again to learn a new system just for one task, and it is obvious that there are so many micros abroad and none of them is going to be universally useful for future tasks. cheers, Neville Michie ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers
Yeah, you really do need a display... this is the 21st century... monkeys got better things to do than count blinkenlights (or read a message scrolling across a six character LCD). A simple blinking LED is handy to alert you that there is a problem. I was probably assuming that you already had a PC setup to log stuff and that you would go look there if you wanted to know what the problem was. About 25 years ago, I worked on a system that used the hack of unary encoding small integers in a blinking LED. That was before small LCDs were inexpensive and readily available. It worked. Yes, it's not great. It (or something similar) might be useful today if you were trying to avoid adding a LCD. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers
Sorry, I don't like to contradict, but I have different experiences made concerning some statements: On Sun, 6 Jul 2008 20:48:27 +, Mark Sims wrote: The Thunderbolt default config is to not save the survey position. Unless you use some software to save the position, every time you power it up it will do a new survey. This takes from 1 hour to several days to complete. [...] How that? My Thunderbolt does no self surveying after switch on and does recover in a few minutes, here my report. If I disconnect the antenna and reconnect a few min. later or I disconnect the pwr fully from my Thunderbolt device, let it cool down for about 15 min, after reconnecting Thundertbolt restarts the internal recovery procedure autonomously with my saved position in the EEPROM. the major steps: mode: power up, activity: inactive for about 60 seconds date and time show up, then, mode: power up, activity: osc warm up terminating after 2 min 15 sec then does start the recovery loop function filter init performing after around 3 min 15 sec. recovery loop and filter init ready after 3 min 20 sec. Thunderbolt does work then fully locked and is disciplining again, working nominal, just the almanac alarm is still on for some minutes more. mode (0) normal activity (0) phase locking self survey process 0% it was at no time executed I am running rcvr mode (7) overdet. clock (time) GPS status (0) doing fixes After I had once determined my exact antenna position several times with the self survey function (try a value of more than 2000, perhaps 5000 fixes) I stored this value in 'setup', 'position' as 'accurate position' and did save by klicking 'save segment'. I don't know if it is of importance in this context, I did set the self surveying parameters 'self survey enable' ticked to 'enable' and 'save position flag' to 'don't save'. In this window you can modify the survey length of 2000 fixes (default value). A few minutes later the oscillator is working at about the full precision... After that you really don't need a controller except for peace of mind that it is working. Mayby once or twice a week I have noticed mine going into holdover mode because of really crappy satellite geometry and signal levels. Without a controller giving a realtime display you would never know your oscillator is undisciplined. I do contemplate with a small control panel, because it is time to think about, that consuming just 100 W during the year does result in 2.4 kWh times 365 equal 876 kWh (not far from 1 MWh!). A few watts shall suffice. And I do not want to take always the Laptop with we (I would need severals). The Laptop or PC shall only be necessary for more detailed setup and control. Such a control panel should me enable to read date and time, the actual coordinates, the DAC-Voltage, the most important warning flags, the correct sat reception, the pps tick and if the oscillator is correctly disciplined. The display may be a 4 line LCD, swapped pages if necessary, together with a few LEDs (blinking or not). As a wish I would like to have the discipline function, fast recovery, man. holdover and restart self survey switchable. A very minimal controller might be an AVR Butterfly. It only has a 6 character display and joyswitch. Rather not up to the task, but dirt cheap (around 20 bucks). It could display a minimal go/nogo type of indication. Best is a dedicated cheap old laptop. You can get them for 50 bucks or so with a 1024x768 full color screen, keyboard, and real serial port. I have a nice controller program in the works that displays full unit and satellite status, graphs the DAC voltage, temperature, OSC error, PPS error, and Allan variances. Allows you to control and configure the unit. Disadvantage is size. The Thunderbolt and power supply do fit nicely under a laptop and add an inch or so the the height. Next best is a dedicated controller based upon the MegaDonkey microcontroller or similar device. It has a 160x80 monochrome LCD with a touch screen and two real serial ports (see mega-donkey.com). Advantage is it allows the Thunderbolt/power supply/controller to be built into a single enclosure to make a stand-alone freq reference with enough display and user input resources to be quite useable. Disadvantage compared to a cheap laptop is cost and the small display. You would have to page though several display screens to get a full take on the unit status. Also the graphs would not be nearly as nice and there is not enough on-chip RAM to do ADEVs, etc. Once I get the laptop program done I'll probably do a controller on the MegaDonkey. I find it a good idea to design some (small?) h/w to command the Thunderbolt without the need of a PC. Why? Is anything needed? What happens if you just apply power with no PC? I'd expect it would power up and self-survey and after a while, make a good clock. I'm pretty sure mine was
Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers
As I reported already, Thunderbold seem to restart perfectly alone once set properly, until I get a problem I have no real control over it, no information about, and for portable use I need always a PC. I think portable is quite different from stationary. If you move it, you have to tell it the new location or let it do a self-survey. You don't need a PC if you don't store the location in the EEPROM. All you have to do is power off for a while and it will do a self-survey when you turn it back on. That covers the moved case at the disadvantage of a long delay if you didn't move it. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers
On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:21:29 -0700, Hal Murray wrote: As I reported already, Thunderbold seem to restart perfectly alone once set properly, until I get a problem I have no real control over it, no information about, and for portable use I need always a PC. I think portable is quite different from stationary. If you move it, you have to tell it the new location or let it do a self-survey. You don't need a PC if you don't store the location in the EEPROM. All you have to do is power off for a while and it will do a self-survey when you turn it back on. That covers the moved case at the disadvantage of a long delay if you didn't move it. Agreed. But with portable I mean to move between different but known locations, even in my own home, or in a friends home etc. Clear, I have to enter the new position parameters (with Laptop) on every new location of use. But then I don't want the need of a PC anymore. Under these a.m. conditions I prefer to keep control without a PC, one need to know wether it still does work reliable. This I would even like to know when the device does steadily run in my 19 inch cabinet - just throwing an eye on it from time to time... Concerning the long start up delay - one can avoid it, just taking the laptop for a moment to read the output of the new self survey result and store it into the memory for this location. Next time you start at this place without the need of further surveys... regards Arnold T. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt Controllers
My pendulum produces pulses at a rate of one per second. That signal clocks a latch that samples the less significant bits of my reference oscillator (100kHz or 1MHz) in a counter. ... but what I would really like is a clock showing UTS in a form that can be compared to a clock. That means one second audible pips and a marker on the minute. Just seeing numbers rolling over on a computer is not good enough to check the timing of the second hand of the clock. You need ear - eye coordinated signals. With WWV I can compare to 1/20th of a second. I haven't quite figured out what that means. How do you feed WWV to your data logger? If you have a TBolt, you get a PPS, a 10 MHz, and a RS232 data stream. If you start a counter with the TBolt PPS and stop it with your pendulum PPS, that will tell you the offset. If you want minute markers, you need to parse the serial data stream. Although I have programmed systems in a variety of languages in my working life, the only languages that have stuck are Fortran and Basic. All the rest are forgotten after a year or two. I do not wish to start again to learn a new system just for one task, and it is obvious that there are so many micros abroad and none of them is going to be universally useful for future tasks. If future tasks are likely to be interesting, then I'd suggest that you pick a manufacturer that looks good and give it a try. Best would be one that a friend uses so you can get some help if you need it. All the manufactures make a broad range of chips with various I/O devices and different sizes of RAM/FLASH and different numbers of pins. Mostly, they are all very similar and use the same tools. Scan the selector chart and pick a chip that has what you need. Or use a bigger one on a board you like. The cost of the chip is tiny relative to everything else. If I was doing what I think you want to do, I'd probably use c in an AVR. That's just because that was the last tiny system I worked on and I have some in my junk box. Another approach would be to horsetrade with a friend who likes writing that sort of software. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers
As I said: The Thunderbolt default config is to not save the survey position. Unless you use some software to save the position... The reason your Thunderbolt does no self surveying at power-on is exactly becuase you DID use some software to save the position!The TAPR units were shipped with their brains washed clean of all previous existence. In that state, a stock Thunderbolt will always do a self-survey at each power up and will not save the results. You have to use some sort of software program to cause it to save the survey position. People who just hook up the power and expect it to instantly start cranking out accurate frequency and timing are in for a surprise. My first unit took three days to survey 1400 points. I know of some that took over a week (due to long idled oscillators and/or very bad antenna coverage). Also be aware that with a saved position Thunderbolts gets all upset if you move more than 300 meters. I'm not sure that it would recover without some human intervention... the manual is not clear on the subject and I have not tried to find out. It is a minor alarm so I assume it does not totally die. I would never use a PC to control the thing. An obsolete PC compatible laptop makes the optimum controller in terms of user interface and cost. The one that I am using draws less than 20 watts (15V, 1.2A). Even less in power save mode. I paid less than $50 for it. Has a 1024x768 display, 40 gig hard drive, 256 meg ram, etc. The program that I wrote needs none of that. Would work fine booting off a floppy into 512K of RAM (DOS does have its charms). With the 40 gig of hard drive, you can log at one second intervals for 16 years. BTW, on 30 July 2017 your Thunderbolt turns into a pumpkin... its interpretation of the GPS week number fails and it may or may not keep working. At a bare minimum, the time and date will be wrong (see ThunderBoltBook2003.pdf page A-56. I still want to do the MegaDonkey based microcontroller for the Thunderbolt. Makes for a smaller, self contained unit. One just can't do as slick and versatile of a controller with it. It does have the advantage of drawing less than one watt of power. There is a way to hook an SDRAM card / FAT filesystem to it for doing logging, but I think I will just pass log data out the second serial port and let people who are interested in that sort of stuff attach their own recording device. _ Use video conversation to talk face-to-face with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/connect_your_way.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_messenger_video_072008 ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers
On Mon, 2008-07-07 at 21:14 +, Mark Sims wrote: BTW, on 30 July 2017 your Thunderbolt turns into a pumpkin... its interpretation of the GPS week number fails and it may or may not keep working. At a bare minimum, the time and date will be wrong (see ThunderBoltBook2003.pdf page A-56. That is testable with a GPS simulator now. No need to wait for 2017. Would give someone plenty of time to take a look at the flash image and perhaps do a binary patch to move the problem further into the future... -- Björn ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers
If you look at what a Thunderbolt was originally designed for (a fixed cell site TF reference), then you are right, they are designed to be powered up and left to sort themselves out - self survey, and then provide TF outputs when everything has stabilised. Rob K -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Sims Sent: 07 July 2008 22:14 To: time-nuts@febo.com Subject: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers As I said: The Thunderbolt default config is to not save the survey position. Unless you use some software to save the position... The reason your Thunderbolt does no self surveying at power-on is exactly becuase you DID use some software to save the position!The TAPR units were shipped with their brains washed clean of all previous existence. In that state, a stock Thunderbolt will always do a self-survey at each power up and will not save the results. You have to use some sort of software program to cause it to save the survey position. People who just hook up the power and expect it to instantly start cranking out accurate frequency and timing are in for a surprise. My first unit took three days to survey 1400 points. I know of some that took over a week (due to long idled oscillators and/or very bad antenna coverage). Also be aware that with a saved position Thunderbolts gets all upset if you move more than 300 meters. I'm not sure that it would recover without some human intervention... the manual is not clear on the subject and I have not tried to find out. It is a minor alarm so I assume it does not totally die. I would never use a PC to control the thing. An obsolete PC compatible laptop makes the optimum controller in terms of user interface and cost. The one that I am using draws less than 20 watts (15V, 1.2A). Even less in power save mode. I paid less than $50 for it. Has a 1024x768 display, 40 gig hard drive, 256 meg ram, etc. The program that I wrote needs none of that. Would work fine booting off a floppy into 512K of RAM (DOS does have its charms). With the 40 gig of hard drive, you can log at one second intervals for 16 years. BTW, on 30 July 2017 your Thunderbolt turns into a pumpkin... its interpretation of the GPS week number fails and it may or may not keep working. At a bare minimum, the time and date will be wrong (see ThunderBoltBook2003.pdf page A-56. I still want to do the MegaDonkey based microcontroller for the Thunderbolt. Makes for a smaller, self contained unit. One just can't do as slick and versatile of a controller with it. It does have the advantage of drawing less than one watt of power. There is a way to hook an SDRAM card / FAT filesystem to it for doing logging, but I think I will just pass log data out the second serial port and let people who are interested in that sort of stuff attach their own recording device. _ Use video conversation to talk face-to-face with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/connect_your_way.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL _Refresh_messenger_video_072008 ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers
The Thunderbolt default config is to not save the survey position. Unless you use some software to save the position, every time you power it up it will do a new survey. This takes from 1 hour to several days to complete. After that you really don't need a controller except for peace of mind that it is working. Mayby once or twice a week I have noticed mine going into holdover mode because of really crappy satellite geometry and signal levels. Without a controller giving a realtime display you would never know your oscillator is undisciplined. A very minimal controller might be an AVR Butterfly. It only has a 6 character display and joyswitch. Rather not up to the task, but dirt cheap (around 20 bucks). It could display a minimal go/nogo type of indication. Best is a dedicated cheap old laptop. You can get them for 50 bucks or so with a 1024x768 full color screen, keyboard, and real serial port. I have a nice controller program in the works that displays full unit and satellite status, graphs the DAC voltage, temperature, OSC error, PPS error, and Allan variances. Allows you to control and configure the unit. Disadvantage is size. The Thunderbolt and power supply do fit nicely under a laptop and add an inch or so the the height. Next best is a dedicated controller based upon the MegaDonkey microcontroller or similar device. It has a 160x80 monochrome LCD with a touch screen and two real serial ports (see mega-donkey.com). Advantage is it allows the Thunderbolt/power supply/controller to be built into a single enclosure to make a stand-alone freq reference with enough display and user input resources to be quite useable. Disadvantage compared to a cheap laptop is cost and the small display. You would have to page though several display screens to get a full take on the unit status. Also the graphs would not be nearly as nice and there is not enough on-chip RAM to do ADEVs, etc. Once I get the laptop program done I'll probably do a controller on the MegaDonkey. I find it a good idea to design some (small?) h/w to command the Thunderbolt without the need of a PC. Why? Is anything needed? What happens if you just apply power with no PC? I'd expect it would power up and self-survey and after a while, make a good clock. I'm pretty sure mine was working correctly before I got the software working. _ Need to know now? Get instant answers with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/connect_your_way.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_messenger_072008 ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers
A very minimal controller might be an AVR Butterfly. It only has a 6 character display and joyswitch. Rather not up to the task, There is the newer DB101 with the 128x64 bit map display. http://www.atmel.com/dyn/Products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=4221 I think they really did a botched job on the RS232 interface, but everything else is well buffered. -- http://www.wearablesmartsensors.com/ http://www.softwaresafety.net/ http://www.designer-iii.com/ http://www.unusualresearch.com/ ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] Thunderbolt controllers
A very minimal controller might be an AVR Butterfly. It only has a 6 character display and joyswitch. Rather not up to the task, but dirt cheap (around 20 bucks). It could display a minimal go/nogo type of indication. Do you actually need a display? How about a LED or 3. My straw man is: off - no power on - OK blink - trouble You can convey a few bits of information with only one LED. Just encode a small integer in the number of blinks. Code 3 would go: blink, blink, blink, pause bling, blink, blink, ... Yes, it's fun to show more information, but if you really want to see more, you probably want to collect that data so you can track things over weeks or months, and you probably have a PC already doing that. -- These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
