Hi,
This is also true for labs. One NMI lab I visited had issues with their
5071As and H-maser clocks. It took some time to correlate it, but it
turned out to correlate with the florescent lamps in the lab and people
walking in and out. Changing these lamps to milder labs removed that
disturbance, so people needing things like light can be a problem even
for higher end grade labs.
The draft has been a re-occurring problem that we have seen, so it was
really nice to show that simple blockage of air helped to significantly
reduce that impact. Again, people walking up to the lab-bench was an issue.
A third example was a couple of students doing stability measures. They
had a long-term measurement that all of a sudden became much flatter,
and they asked me what it could be. They had started the measurement at
15:00 and three hours late the semi-cyclic variation in phase stopped
and things became much more quiet. I could then quickly conclude that it
was the A/C for the building turned off, not to heat it during night.
They didn't believe me, so I popped out the board and showed how the
air-stream passed directly over the crystal metal housing and hence had
a good thermal connection to the surrounding air temperature. I later
had them put a few strands of foam-tape over the crystal, and they
measured the same stable behavior over the full work-day. Silly people
want a relative comfortable temperature and well, building A/C is
typically bang/bang regulated so you get what you paid for.
Cheers,
Magnus
On 11/01/2017 02:17 PM, Bob kb8tq wrote:
Hi
On Nov 1, 2017, at 12:14 AM, MLewis <[email protected]> wrote:
(I suspect this is drifting from the original thread too much, so new subject)
Temperature ranges from 65F to 78F, with the potential for drafts, but is more
typically 76F.
The gotcha in a real environment often involves people. They walk by (creating
a draft). They
turn on all the lights and equipment. They open or close the blinds to let in
or block the sun.
They tend to do this in an unpredictable / chaotic fashion. All of this makes a
correction
process based on “normal operation” a bit difficult. Something goes wrong, and
the unit
goes into holdover. People suddenly start dashing around and the temperature is
not
what it has been ….
Bob
I read about the NTPsec runs with insulating a Pi and running a load generating
program to better maintain a stable core temperature.
Just today I've put my GPS module inside a case for an RF shield that is also
semi insulated. It's feeding LH on a PC while I do the next step.
The Pi 3 is going inside a large enough tea tin and that will be lined with
insulation.
I'm wondering about insulating the RTC...
The low cost for a 'precision' RTC means it is cheap to test.
I'd completely discounted coasting with the system clock, as I have fixed in my
head the variable loads on my production machine mean that Window's time lags
variable amounts, as the CPU load is variable with variable burst loads every
1/8 of a second.
Michael
On 31/10/2017 11:45 PM, Hal Murray wrote:
I'm intending to add a "precision" (well, precision to the Pi world) RTC to
my Pi 3 to use for a holdover source when it hasn't got PPS from the GPS
module.
An RTC that +/- 3 PPM over 24 hours would be great for holdovers of one to
20 minutes.
Run some experiments to collect some data and play with the numbers.
How stable is the temperature in your environment?
The key to keeping sane time on a PC or Raspberry PI is to calibrate the
crystal. Most CPUs have a register that counts at the CPU clock frequency -
or something in that range. Most systems smear the clock to keep the FCC
happy...
Most OSes keep time by watching that register and dividing by the clock rate.
The actual clock rate doesn't usually match the number printed on the
crystal. It's close, but ntpd can easily measure the error and tell the
kernel so the kernel can use the right value. If you turn on loopstats, ntpd
will log it and you can graph it.
If you are writing an embedded system, you will want that sort of logic too.
My guess is that in the under 30 minute range, you will get better results by
just coasting with the system clock rather that using a RTC. It would be an
interesting experiment. Implement both clocking schemes and compare them.
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