[time-nuts] Trimble / Symmetricom UCCM mini-GPSDO boards

[Pete Lancashire]

How about putting the pictures of the TB on a site with overlays
saying what it is, so we know to stay away from the seller with many
names

On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 5:38 PM, skipp Isaham via time-nuts
<time-nuts at febo.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Mark Sims <holrum at hotmail.com>
>> Subject: [time-nuts] Trimble / Symmetricom UCCM mini-GPSDO boards
>
>> For those of you that have one of these... good-ish news.   I have Lady Heather working with
>> them (well, at least the Trimble works,  the Symmetricoms have not arrived yet and there are
>> a couple of known differences in their commands).  I'll get the code out there when I have a
>> chance to test it with the Symmetricoms.  They seem to fairly nice little units.  Not as tweakable
>> / versatile as a Z3801A, etc but quite usable.
>
> A Trimble Thunderbolt with Lady Heather initiated my interest in small micro-controller GPSDO status
> display boards, such as the one sold by (Chris ZL1CVD) on Ebay. I purchased and built the status board
> and am very happy with the results. However, as a course project, a friend and I rewrote a lot of the code to
> include power savings (interrupts) and a few other extras.
>
> "ZL1CVD TSIP GPSDO Thunderbolt Nortel Display (PCB Only)"
> Ebay Item number: 111864779325
>
> Chris's web site for his TSIP board
>
> https://sites.google.com/site/zl1cvd/tsip
>
> Anyway, just an offer to freely share the firmware we developed to hopefully enhance Chris's board.
>
>> For those that are thinking about buying one,  be aware that there are some pretty skeezy / clueless
>> / dishonest sellers out there.  People have received units with various parts that have been physically
>> damaged or ripped off the boards.  Apparently one or more of the Chinese scrappers was less than
>> gentle removing them from whatever it was that they came out of.  EEVBLOG has a long thread that
>> mentions the Chinese Standard GPSDO Damage Infliction.  A couple of devices (an inductor, a
>> couple of caps, and some connectors) seem to be the most prone to be damaged... most damage
>> was easily repaired.   My Trimble came from a seller with a high reported coefficient of skeezyness,
>> but was in perfect condition.  Oh, and they run on 6V 2A startup,  .8A warmed up.
>
> I purchased a received dead Thunderbolt from a China based seller, who stalled answer replies over weeks
> and then expired the regular Ebay return policy... Eventually with no return shipping verification signature
> process at their receiving end of the trip, said returned Thunderbolt was of course never credited being "lost
> in transit".
>
> I then received the return credit only because I paid that purchase with my credit card through Paypal.
> Of course, in three weeks the same seller using a different Ebay name put the exact same returned
> defective Thunderbolt back up for auction... I had clearly identifiable pictures of the defective unit I received...
> I reported it to Ebay (wasn't easy) and eventually the auction was taken down. The seller however, remains
> active with current auctions...
>
> Credit where it's due...
> A number of friends and myself have purchased Thunderbolts from the Australian Ebay Seller
> electro_wrench and every one has been received fast and worked very well.
>
> Back to the ZL1CVD GPSDO status PC board kits/parts...
>
> If you have/use one of Chris's GPSDO display status boards or even something similar you developed, you
> are welcome to try our revised firmware/code (Free of course).  Nothing rocket science special but there are
> some novel approaches taken to achieve notable power savings. Developed using WinAVR and AVR Dude
> (both software packages are available on the web... and free).
>
>
> cheers,
>
> skipp
> skipp025 at yahoo dot com
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