[time-nuts] PC Time Servers

[David J Taylor]

I have not been on this list since 2016 and have some new time questions.

I am using a program called “Faros.”  It is for ham radio.  It controls a 
radio receiver and automatically checks 18 transmitting beacons around the 
world.  It displays the signal strength of each beacon.  This gives the 
radio operator some idea of whether they could contact someone in that area.

Faros depends on an accurate time source that has consistent delays.  I 
guess “delay” here means the time it takes for the time signal to get to the 
PC and Faros.

There is an editable list of time servers in the software.  There is also a 
test function that checks time source availability and delay.  The only one 
that has very low delays (e.g., 1 ms) is called “localhost.”  All the other 
servers have larger delays, such as 38 ms or more.

Can someone tell me what “localhost” is?

I have a simple GPS receiver (from Adafruit) connected to the PC that sends 
data to Lady Heather.  Is there a way I can use the data from the GPS in 
Faros?

Richard
=====================================

Richard,

As others have mentioned, "localhost" is your own PC, but that does need to 
get its time from somewhere.

In your situation I would strongly recommend installing NTP on your PC.  The 
reference version of NTP (free) has many advantages over the various, 
so-called "atomic clock" programs.  I have some notes on installing NTP on 
Windows:

  https://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/setup.html

That will get you into millisecond level accuracy, but if you need better 
you could use the PPS (pulse per second) stream - if your GPS provides 
that - to get into sub-millisecond.

If you want a Winter project, build a Raspberry Pi based NTP server with a 
GPS/PPS source, and you're into having a tens of microseconds accuracy local 
server:

  https://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/Raspberry-Pi-quickstart.html

Cheers,
David
-- 
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