[time-nuts] Heol Design N024 GPS receiver

Sean Gallagher sean at wetstonetech.com
Mon Jun 15 18:31:02 UTC 2015


So we finally got in our test Heol N024 GPS replacement board for the 
Trimble Ace III that ran into the 1995 rollover and most notably 
affected just about everyone with a Datum/Symmetricom/Microsemi TymServe 
2100.

As Olivier Descoubes (the contact at Heol) posted I can confirm that 
their firmware has corrected both the 1995 rollover and the 1 second UTC 
offset that has been plaguing us since winter. I tried it in the oldest 
Firmware that is the backup on the 2100 in case of failure (v 2.84 I 
think) along with versions 3.1 and currently running back up on 4.1.

Also the board works with the Datum BC635pci cards as well for anyone 
that uses those.

Finally I am getting good time again to my servers without a mad 
scientist setup going on.

Full disclaimer though the price has increased. The original N024 boards 
were I believe 95 euro and are still available as such. However these 
will not work with the TS2100 or bc635pci cards. It looked like it was 
getting the location data right when I looked through some settings on 
the 2100 but it won't translate the timing data right. The V2 has the 
updated firmware that corrects the issues and works properly but the 
price has gone up to something like 245 euro. Plus it's shipping from 
France so you're looking at over $300 for this solution. This was due to 
them putting in about 2-3 weeks of development and they also purchased a 
2100 for testing. They hope that after they sell some units and offset 
those costs they can lower the price gradually down again. I must say 
however that this $300 solution for us is far superior to the $7,000 
3xxx series replacement solution that Microsemi was trying to sell me. 
Also Heol is stating a 1 year hardware warranty and supporting the 
software to 2035. I must say that with this support and maybe replacing 
my oscillator ( I think the original factory is still in mine) that I 
can get years of service out of this still and not break the bank.



Respectfully,

Sean Gallagher
Malware Analyst
571-340-3475



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