[time-nuts] WWVB Chronverter update progress

[Achim Gratz]

paul swed writes:
> Indeed anything could be used if you want to modify the clocks. I
> don't.

Fair enough.

> They do what they do very well and consume 0 power.

Well, I assume there's some sort of battery involved, but anyway, this
line of discussion misses the point.  Replacing one LF module with
another HF module, both powered on for a maximum of half an hour a day
shouldn't make much of a difference (as long as you do not use the
transmit function of the module, which I can see uses for given the fact
that there's nearly always a thermometer and hygrometer in these
clocks).

> Can be placed in any location in the house or garage and even the basement.
> Interestingly without the real wwvb I can orient them any way I want
> also.

That's some indication that your transmitter may have more power or your
general reception of the real WWVB is better than you think.  The null
on a ferrite rod is pretty steep, so finding no orientation where it
stops working seems strange.  I have had to open a number of my clocks
specifically to reorient the ferrite so I could place them where I
wanted.  The only clock that didn't have that problem turned out to
employ two modules with their antennas at 90° at the opposite sides of
the case.

Anyway, you don't want to modify the clock and I don't particularly want
to build something that might be illegal if anybody can detect and
complain about it, even when that chance is very small.

> The last thing I want to do is hack them. But like you say if you are
> willing to hack a set of 3 wires will do very well. Or just leave them
> powered all the time. Many options.

Actually, one of the reasons I even brought it up was that many years
ago I needed a bunch of clocks driven from a master clock so they'd all
show the same time synchronized to the sub-second and they needed to be
readable from a fair distance, so their display had to be large.  That
was for a recording studio, so the electromechanical clocks were out due
to the racket they make.  The cheapest solution was in fact to have the
master clock put DCF77 bits on a telephone wire and then run that into a
set of DCF clocks with the biggest LCD that we could find.  I didn't
even remove the modules, they just never got their enable signal after
the modification.  The other bit to know about these clocks was that
they had slide switches instead of todays typical buttons to set their
modes and that meant you could put them into a continous reception mode
easily.

> But many on time-nuts have these clocks and should wwvb be turned off its
> nice to know my weather stations will keep working and have the right time
> and far more accurately then my mobile phone.

That's why I was curious about their inner workings and if they might
be much different than what I know from my side of the pond.

> Last comment. Its a time nuts challenge just have to tinker and share.

I wasn't commenting about the usefulness of the approach or your (or
anyone elses) intentions or anything of that sort.  I had hoped it was
obvious that this omission was not meant as a back-handed critique, I
just had nothing to add to the information that was already shared.  But
you seem to be offended nonetheless (ever-so-slightly), so I apologize.


Regards,
Achim.
-- 
+<[Q+ Matrix-12 WAVE#46+305 Neuron microQkb Andromeda XTk Blofeld]>+

SD adaptation for Waldorf microQ V2.22R2:
http://Synth.Stromeko.net/Downloads.html#WaldorfSDada