[time-nuts] WWVB Chronverter update progress

[paul swed]

Achim
No offense taken and sorry if it appeared that way. The great thing about
time nuts is there is a diversity of opinions, guidance and help. I have
admired the DCF signal over the years and whats been done with it. You
mention studios and I also have been involved in Broadcast television so
appreciate time from that perspective.
My understanding is that those cheap little clock ICs handle all of the VLF
time signals. Its normally some sort of internal selection. That may or may
not be pads on the board. pretty amazing for a black glob on a board.
Its unfortunate that we may loose out wwvb. But at least direct
alternatives exist. I am fortunate to be able to actually measure radiated
levels very accurately so will respect the allowed emission levels.
Regards
Paul
WB8TSL

On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 4:14 PM, Achim Gratz <Stromeko at nexgo.de> wrote:

> 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
>
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