[time-nuts] Re: CF cards and the Trimble NetRS

[paul swed]

Did get the "convert to rinex" working. I actually seemed to have a bad
exe. I found a newer one on the actual trimble site not unavco and that
installed and operated correctly. I can see why a rinex file is useful. Its
readable.
Regards
Paul
WB8TSL

On Mon, Mar 21, 2022 at 6:25 PM paul swed <paulswedb at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well Bob
> There you go changing the game just a bit. I saw the NTP settings and was
> thinking for some reason it might want to access a NTP server. I can see I
> have it backwards. Just may add a IP. I would have gotten there given time.
> But I will take a short cut any day.
> The Net RS is reasonably low power at 12V @ .35A or 4.5W. Its not apparent
> in the unit that the power coming in hits an inverter. I think its a linear
> regulator. Nothing looked like a choke for conversion.
> Did stick the antenna out of the window for a clearer view of the sky and
> picked up 8-10 db. The house blocks to the north.
> Regards
> Paul
> WB8TSL
>
> On Mon, Mar 21, 2022 at 5:50 PM Bob kb8tq <kb8tq at n1k.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> More NetRS trivia:
>>
>> One of the features of the NetRS is that it will act as an NTP server.
>> It’s not the most modern device so I very much would not want to
>> serve a ton of clients off of one. It also has been a *long* time since
>> the OS was patched. If you are looking for “modern” features or
>> security patches, maybe not the best thing to use. It certainly isn’t
>> going to compete with the Leo Bodnar NTP in terms of size or
>> power consumption. You won’t get a steady stream of updates and
>> patches like you would on something cool from Meinberg.
>>
>> That said, for a “shop for a while” sub $150 sort of price, they would
>> be a reasonable deal. Not many packaged NTP products on eBay
>> that you “just plug in” and that run multi-band GPS. You would get
>> the frequency monitoring and RTK base station stuff “for free”.
>>
>> Can you / could you / might you upgrade the OS? Since there really
>> isn’t much info on what the hardware looks like, that could be
>> exciting. The cards are “locked down” (though not encrypted) as
>> received so even poking around to try this or that isn’t trivial. How
>> much was done (if anything) to keep the OS “out of the way” of the
>> GPS code …. who knows ….
>>
>> Fun !!
>>
>> Bob
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Mar 21, 2022, at 1:01 PM, John Ackermann N8UR <jra at febo.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > You can stream data out of the receiver via either TCP or serial port
>> without storing to disk, so that's probably the best bet to save CF wear
>> and tear.  I'm not sure if it's more difficult to turn the
>> >
>> > But for now I'm doing as you suggest -- I have one "T00" format session
>> logging to disk in 24 hour files, with the "autodelete" function turned on
>> to delete oldest files first when the disk gets nearly full.
>> >
>> > However, I've been collecting data now for almost 4 months, and have
>> used 68.5 MB, with 770 MB still available, so I won't need to delete
>> anything for quite a long while.
>> >
>> > John
>> > ----
>> >
>> > On 3/21/22 11:22, Skip Withrow wrote:
>> >> Hello Time-Nuts,
>> >> Seems like there has been a lot of interest in the NetRS lately
>> >> because of their availability at reasonable prices (sometimes).
>> >> They use a Compact Flash card to store the operating system and logged
>> >> data files.  I'm not very knowledgeable about Linux, but I would guess
>> >> that there is no wear leveling implemented in this receiver.
>> >> So, when considering how best to use the data logging area it would
>> >> seem that instead of collecting some data, downloading it, deleting
>> >> file(s), and repeating the best strategy would be to collect data and
>> >> let the data logging area fill up before deleting (the files could be
>> >> read anytime).
>> >> This would minimize the number of writes to any one area of the CF
>> >> card I believe (except perhaps the directory structure).
>> >> However, even if you were deleting data often, you still may not be
>> >> able to get to the life of the CF card.  The good news is that even if
>> >> a card does go bad you can reconstruct a new one from the image of
>> >> version 1.3-2 of the software that is floating around.  I have tried
>> >> it and it works.
>> >> If there is better insight into the operation of this receiver, or
>> >> best practices strategy I'm all ears.
>> >> Regards,
>> >> Skip Withrow
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