[time-nuts] Re: hp 5061B, power-up sequence, logging

[Magnus Danielson]

Hi Tom,

While I have not been looking at 5061A/B in particular, this do touches 
on an idea I've been having.

Several of the analog rubidiums and cesiums have the same thing, a 
rotary switch and things you can monitor. However, I've found that even 
a very simple monitoring gives usually a great insight. For 
Oscilloquartz cesiums, all the various voltages is available on a DB25 
connector, so a project would be to use some small suitable processor, 
scan voltage and log them similar to what we have from say FTS-4040/4065 
etc. Many other rubidiums and cesiums could probably do the same thing. 
A certain amount of signal-conversion in analog is needed to scale it 
in. The EFOS A/B masers do the same thing really.

Being able to dump things into InfluxDB/Grafana help a lot, including 
storing data and post-process them at need.

So, I think that once a suitable core code for such a thing is done, 
doing the necessary analog adaptations for the various boxes and 
document the offset/scaling factors to "real units" should make the 
"catch script" relatively easy to adapt and we could lower the 
threash-hold and crowd-develop it as we go. I would love to modify all 
my running analog clocks to have this. None of my HP506[0-2] has cesium 
thought.

Cheers,
Magnus

On 2023-01-04 16:17, Tom Van Baak via time-nuts wrote:
> I have a hp 5061B that's been in standby (Cs Off mode) for several 
> years and I plan to power it up for a while and see how it's doing.
>
> This time I'd like to track its vitals during the sequence -- not by 
> manually reading the meter every few minutes as I usually do -- but by 
> logging meter readings automatically with a multi-channel ADC. 
> Readings of interest would be: Ion Pump I, Cs Oven, Beam I, Control, 
> 2nd Harmonic, and lock state.
>
> Has anyone done this? Do you have any recommendations on obtaining the 
> voltages as simple as possible? It's slightly complicated by the fact 
> that not all meter readings are referenced to ground. I'll probably 
> pick an 8-channel USB ADC for this. Maybe using differential instead 
> of single-ended inputs would work around the floating meter design.
>
> A sampling rate of 1 Hz would normally be enough, but when the CBT has 
> been off for so long there are interesting pulses of CBT oven and Ion 
> current and so maybe 10 Hz or even 50 Hz would be better to capture 
> that detail.
>
> This is a one-off test, just to have a well documented example of Cs 
> oven power-up & locking sequence. But I'd consider leaving it wired in 
> so I can collect data long-term as well. Most modern rubidium and 
> cesium clocks have computer connections and telemetry already, so in a 
> sense this project is to explore retroactively adding similar 
> functionality to 5061-era cesium standards.
>
> Anyway, if anyone has done something similar I'd be interested in 
> hearing about it.
>
> Thanks,
> /tvb
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