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

[W7SLS]

Adam,

You might already know this, but if not …

To add on to Bob’s suggestions, if you have more money than time,
TAPR has some ‘divide to 1 pps’ devices:

	https://tapr.org/product/tadd-2-mini-pulse-per-second-divider/

And some ‘compare 1 pps devices’:
 	
	https://tapr.org/product/tapr-ticc/

I have no financial connection to TAPR, except as a member (hmm, time to renew, probably).

Good luck on your adventures!

Sent from my iPad

> On Jan 5, 2022, at 5:33 PM, Bob kb8tq <kb8tq at n1k.org> wrote:
> 
> 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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