[time-nuts] Advise on building a DIY GPSDO?

Alexander Pummer alexpcs at ieee.org
Mon Apr 4 21:49:16 UTC 2016


Building it cost you time and money, most likely much more than to buy,  
but you gain experience and you learn the limits of the different 
techniques, what you would not get to know other way
73
KJ6UHN
Alex

On 4/4/2016 1:15 PM, Dimitri.p wrote:
> Regarding "as good a place to start as any",  ublox receivers will do 
> 10KHz all day long.
> I didn't realize ublox receivers have dual output until after I built 
> a couple of other GPSDOs, (well, maybe four)
>
> As for a good  OCXO: other than the Morion MV89a, ($20-$50)  for 
> anything else, figure about one or two hundred bucks depending on new 
> vs used and "luck".
>
> But as it's been said before it all depends on if you are building "to 
> use" or "to play/learn/experiment/get your hands dirty"
>
> Building does not save money or time and buying doen't give you an 
> excuse to fire up the soldering iron.
> Decisions...decisions...
>
>
> Dimitri.p
>
>
> At 12:00 PM 4/4/2016, Chris Caudle wrote:
>> On Mon, April 4, 2016 11:18 am, Tom Holmes wrote:
>> > The preceding questions always come up when a newbie
>> > comes up on the list wanting to build their own GPSDO.
>>
>> It is good to make sure the person actually wants to build a GPSDO.
>> A few years back I was in a similar position, and my answer was I 
>> actually
>> needed a high accuracy reference to check frequency accuracy of some
>> clocks, and the recommendation was just get a Thunderbolt.  I didn't 
>> know
>> about surplus GPSDO's available so that was good advice for me, I didn't
>> actually >want< to build a GPSDO myself.  It would have been fun, but 
>> the
>> end goal was more important to me.
>>
>> So I think really the first question should be do you want to build a
>> GPSDO, or do you want a high accuracy time and frequency source for its
>> own use?  Because if you want to own a GPSDO to use, building one 
>> yourself
>> is probably not the way to go.  Get a surplus unit, or save up a little
>> more and get a new Jackson Labs.
>> If you just like to build stuff and a GPSDO is the particular stuff you
>> want to build next, then go ahead and have fun.  Chris Albertson's 
>> arduino
>> based design is probably as good a place to start as any, it should be
>> cheap and I think the pieces are easier to find than that CPLD based
>> design that relies on having a GPS that can output 10kHz instead of just
>> PPS.
>>
>> -- 
>> Chris Caudle
>>
>>
>>
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