[time-nuts] Re: Crystal oscillator for a begginer

[Bob kb8tq]

Hi

In general, eBay is your friend for stable crystal oscillators at a 
“friendly” price. Even if you buy 10 to get one, the price is still pretty
good. What you learn testing them is indeed “Time Nut Stuff”. 

Just what’s a good deal varies almost week to week. It is very much a 
shop shop shop sort of thing. 

Best / quickest / easiest way to use all these gizmos: Program up a PIC 
to divide them to 1 pps and go from there. 

Bob

> On Jan 5, 2022, at 6:01 PM, Adam Space <time.isanapp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> My question is rather open ended. I'm relatively new to timing and whatnot.
> So far I have mainly dabbled in NTP, and some GPS stuff with a Raspberry Pi
> with a GPS hat. But both of these are limited to timekeeping on an actual
> computer system, but I'd like to get into some of the more hardware stuff,
> and I figured a crystal oscillator would be a good place to start.
> 
> My knowledge of hardware is pretty weak, so I am unsure of how stuff works
> in this realm. For example, a quick google search shows very cheap crystal
> oscillators, like these
> <https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/cts-frequency-controls/MXO45-3C-10M000000/1801887>.
> But I am confused on how I could exactly use this. One thing I like about
> NTP is that I can see and compare different clocks, and synchronize them
> to time-scales like UTC, and track their performance over time. But if I
> have a crystal oscillator going, how could I compare it or adjust it to
> other clocks on my network, or to UTC for example?
> 
> Or to take another example, suppose I have a few crystal oscillators like
> the one above. Is there a way I could compare them to each other, or log
> the offsets from each other, and so on? Ultimately, it would be nice to
> compare the frequency and time offsets to a reference source that is
> accurate long-term, like my GPS hat Raspberry Pi.
> 
> Any ideas, suggestions, or clarifications are welcome. Additionally, if
> anyone knows of any guides (either text, video, or whatever), that would be
> great too.
> 
> Adam
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