[time-nuts] GPS for ntp

Simon Marsh subscriptions at burble.com
Tue Oct 21 14:39:56 UTC 2014


Sorry, I wasn't clear.

The /dev/pps0 devices output a timestamp corresponding to when the event 
happened.

The GPIO driver does this very simply by waiting for an interrupt event 
and then asking what (current) time it is. This leads to the problem 
that there is a non-deterministic time between the event and when the 
code gets to ask 'what time is it ?'

With HW capture, you can get an accurate view of when the event took 
place but only relative to the counter in the particular timer/capture 
unit that is being used. You have to synchronise between the counter 
value and what the OS understands is 'system time' in order to create a 
retrospective timestamp for when the event occured. Whilst you've solved 
the problem with the interrupt approach, you've created a different one 
of needing to synchronise counters.

My question is how do you convert between the timer value and system 
time to get the timestamp ?

Cheers


Simon


On 21/10/2014 15:14, Iain Young wrote:
> It just turns up as /dev/pps0 like any other PPS source, so you
> configure ntp in the same way you would for any other PPS source,
> or build ppsapitest to test it manually
>
> (Although be aware you -may get a Invalid argument error from
> ppsapitest after running it more than once. Reboot solves it,
> and since the BBB's don't do anything else, and I don't restart ntp
> too often, its not a big deal for me.)
>
>
> Iain
> On 21/10/14 14:58, Simon Marsh wrote:
>> Iain,
>>
>> How do you map the timer counter value in to a PPS timestamp ?
>> (that is, how do you turn the HW counter value in to what the OS thought
>> the time was when the event occured ?)
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>> On 21/10/2014 13:54, Iain Young wrote:
>>> It's been done on FreeBSD. See:
>>>
>>> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arm/2013-February/004769.html 
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Patch is now in recent FreeBSD releases/snapshots
>>>
>>> And yes, it's far superior to than using the GPIOs, or UARTS
>>>
>>> There was some work done on Linux, but I'm not sure it was ever 
>>> finished
>>> or published.
>>>
>>> All of my "Timing" Beaglebones run FreeBSD, with the exception of the
>>> TIC stufff I wrote for the PRUSS's. As soon as the userspace bits of
>>> that work on FreeBSD, I'll probably switch that to FreeBSD as well.
>>>
>>>
>>> All the Best
>>>
>>> Iain
>>>
>>> On 21/10/14 13:33, Neil Schroeder wrote:
>>>> Andrew-
>>>> I'm actually referring to using either the eCAP function or one of the
>>>> integrated dmtimer triggers - which are, from some accounts, more
>>>> accurate
>>>> than a gpio.
>>>>
>>>> Google beaglebone dmtimer pps.
>>>>
>>>> NS
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 11:56 PM, Andrew Rodland
>>>> <andrew at cleverdomain.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 10:50 PM, Neil Schroeder <gigneil at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> The one thing that hasn't yet happened is making the beaglebone
>>>>>> timestamp
>>>>>> on the linux side in a way that works for ntp.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Custom code no problem. Freebsd PPSAPI no problem. Linux, nothing
>>>>>> there
>>>>>> yet.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have been working on it but if anyone has some insight its
>>>>>> appreciated.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> It appears to support gpio class devices, with interrupts, so the
>>>>> pps-gpio driver (in-tree since 3.2) should work just fine. The only
>>>>> thing that's needed (other than building the driver) is a bit of code
>>>>> in the board support file to register the device. Various folks have
>>>>> done it for the rpi (http://ntpi.openchaos.org/pps_pi/ for example),
>>>>> and I've done it for the UDOO Dual
>>>>> (https://gist.github.com/arodland/518f037e4f24b1984286). The BBB is
>>>>> probably about as easy.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm not sure if there's other hardware that lets you do better than
>>>>> grabbing an interrupt, but that will get you in the microsecond range
>>>>> or a bit better, anyhow.
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