[time-nuts] TruePosition on the Arduino

[Ben Hall]

Hi Mark and list,

On 6/6/2017 9:39 PM, Mark Sims wrote:
> If you run it on a system with an accurately set clock,  Lady Heather
> can measure the offset (and standard deviation and ADEVs)  between
> the time in the receiver time code message and when the last byte of
> the time code message comes in.

I was not aware of this - very good to know!  I've got two of the 
TruePosition boards.  One is being used in my Arduino programming 
adventure and the second is destined to be connected up to Lady Heather 
as another neat timepiece.  I'm not 100% sure how I'll end up doing that 
- maybe an old laptop, maybe something with an RPi.  LH worked great on 
an old laptop I had so I just may go back to that.

> Most receivers are surprisingly well behaved in their message
> timing... a few are not.  Only a few receivers (like the Z38xx and
> RFTG-m) output the time code message before the 1PPS.

I did more work into this last night...which involved repeating my 
previous test setup comparing the TruePosition with Arduino against a 
Lassen LP and eventually the WWV dial-up telephone number.  I was back 
to being exactly one second slow again on the TruePosition versus the 
other two sources.

I started to doubt my sanity...as when I wrote my original message on 
the 6th of June, I was certain that the TruePosition was not 1 second 
slow.  One of the reasons I shave my head is so that I cannot pull my 
hair out...else I'd have been doing that the other night.

So I went back to basics:

The Lassen LP manual clearly states that it asserts 1PPS high then some 
amount of milliseconds later, puts out the time it was at that past 1PPS 
tick via serial.

One thing I'd not done on the TruePosition was to crack open the manual 
on the Furuno unit that's on-board.  You are 100% correct - the Furuno 
acts the same way - outputs the 1PPS tick *then* sends the message 
containing the time it was at the 1PPS tick.

My Arduino code reads that timecode...but doesn't display it until the 
*next* 1PPS tick so it will always be one second slow unless I 
compensate for this.  (which is easy, just add one to the seconds count)

Digging around further...I couldn't find a single GPS module that would 
put out the timecode before the 1PPS tick.  I even looked at some of the 
Ublox units we're using at work as a time source inside one of our 
projects - it has the 1PPS then sends out the time code.

I want to thank you and the other respondents here - without y'all, I'd 
never have figured this out!  I'm off work tomorrow as today is my wife 
and my 15th wedding anniversary...so I may get some time Saturday to 
continue playing with the TruePosition and the Arduino.  Once I get 
something that's halfway decent...I'll put it out for people to give it 
a whirl and tell me how crappy my programming skills are!  ;)

thanks much,
ben