|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Rather than using a third-party program, which you admittedly won't really know what it's doing, why not roll your own? It's downright trivial. Using a USB-attached GPS is arguably even more accurate than dealing with the latency of pulling the time from an Internet server, albeit we're only talking milliseconds. All you really need to do is parse one line. Decoding NTP is only slightly more difficult as the data is binary packed in a struct. What I have here is just a quick 'n dirty read of a USB GPS over it's serial port. I've run this PowerShell script against both the VK-162 and VK-172 variants of GPS USB devices, both of which can be found on Amazon for under 25 GBP. (Sadly, they're like half the price on the US version of Amazon.) The script is very basic in that it just reads the time three times then exists. I found that here's a bit of lag in the PowerShell interpreter. Doing it three times removes the initial latency of the interpreter. Again... it's just a quick solution. It can be put into the windows-scheduler to then run every five minutes. Having a USB GPS device is nice too when you're at a park playing with radios and you don't have Internet access or don't want/need to use your phone as a hotspot. But the real reason is that they're fun toys. Oh... MULTIPSK has a clock/GPS program too that's quite good and free. The only downside is that the program must have admin privs to set the system time. One more thing - if you are using any external GPS for time sync, locally or via NTP, you may wish to consider disabling the Windows Time Service. Otherwise you'll have a case of dueling banjos. Bob, W4RLS #Requires -RunAsAdministrator
$availableComPorts = [System.IO.Ports.SerialPort]::getportnames()
Write-Host 'Available COM ports:' $availableComPorts
$counter = 0
$maxLoop = 3
# Choose the COM port and open it.
$comPort = "COM7"
Write-Host 'Connecting to GPS on COM port' $comPort
$port= new-Object System.IO.Ports.SerialPort $comPort,4800,None,8,one
$port.Open()
do {
$line = $port.ReadLine()
# Look for an NMEA 0183 sentence that starts with $GPGGA.
if ($line.StartsWith('$GPGGA'))
{
$counter = $counter + 1
# Parse the sentence.
$parts = $line.Split(',')
$hour = $parts[1].Substring(0, 2)
$minute = $parts[1].Substring(2, 2)
$second = $parts[1].Substring(4, 2)
$gpsDate = (Get-Date).ToUniversalTime().Date.AddHours($hour).AddMinutes($minute).AddSeconds($second)
# To set the date, the program needs to be run as an administrator.
Set-Date -Date $gpsDate.ToLocalTime()
Write-Host 'Setting local clock to: ' $gpsDate
}
}
while ($port.IsOpen -and $counter -lt $maxLoop)
$port.Close()
Write-Host 'Connection to GPS closed.'
|
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Milo Medin (K6CZ)
If you want to be able to operate in an emergency where there are large scale outages in Internet connectivity, it can definitely be useful to have a GPS clock on your local network. It's easy with Raspberry Pi's an GPS boards that plug into the GPIO connectors. Technically, you need two sources to have reliable stratum 1 time access, so that's what I have. One in the attic, and one on the roof (and that PI also acts as a USB to ethernet gateway for L band SDRs), both POE powered from a basement server rack with UPS and POE switches so they would operate during a power failure. It's pretty easy to setup and gives you independence from the Internet. Thx milo (K6CZ) On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 10:15 AM Siegfried Jackstien <siegfried.jackstien@...> wrote: THAT was a good one ... i bet that the main clock of the motherboard is |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Conrad, PA5Y
You need both, the monitoring tool allows you to check things from time to time.
Conrad
From: main@SDR-Radio.groups.io <main@SDR-Radio.groups.io>
On Behalf Of Noel via groups.io
Sent: 01 June 2022 16:27 To: main@SDR-Radio.groups.io Subject: Re: [SDR-Radio] My Computer Drifts!
Sorry. This is the actual programme.
Meinberg NTP The previous link was to a monitoring tool. |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Conrad, PA5Y
Simon as suggested, use Meinberg NTP server and NTP server monitor, it is just what you need.
Regards
Conrad PA5Y
From: main@SDR-Radio.groups.io <main@SDR-Radio.groups.io>
On Behalf Of Curt Faulk via groups.io
Sent: 01 June 2022 17:05 To: main@SDR-Radio.groups.io Subject: Re: [SDR-Radio] My Computer Drifts!
Simon, I agree with the suggestions for Meinberg. I have used it for a long time and it is just excellent. |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Siegfried Jackstien
THAT was a good one ... i bet that the main clock of the motherboard is not calculated from main power supply :-)
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
dg9bfc sigi Am 01.06.2022 um 16:28 schrieb Uwe Volk: Hi Simon,I run a small ASUS NUC with an AMD 4700U inside. the time drifts by a few seconds during an 8 hour period!Maybe the standard frequency of your main power supply is not very stable on 50 Hz. Check, if other machines have this deviation also or not.Shirley there's a free program on the web i can use to sync with NTP?I can recommend NetTime, very tiny, run on all Win OS incl. Win 11: |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Jon Fear
Meinberg is our goto at work for Windows servers when there are no linux systems about. We generally set up a simple linux vm running chrony as the local ntp server for the local network. A Pi running it's flavour of linux would suffice, it uses next to no horsepower and provides a central time server for all your network based devices.
As David Taylor has said elsewhere, it is quite simple to set it up using GPS although in most cases this is simply not required. D4 was also my goto many years ago before linux! BW Jon |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
On 01/06/2022 15:05, Simon Brown wrote:
Well,Simon, just use reference NTP: https://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/setup.html Should cope with rate errors of up to 43 seconds per day. 73, David GM8ARV -- SatSignal Software - Quality software for you Web: https://www.satsignal.eu Email: david-taylor@... Twitter: @gm8arv |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Hi,
It's AMD in a small NUC, I bet it's temperature related?
From: main@SDR-Radio.groups.io <main@SDR-Radio.groups.io> on behalf of Uwe Volk via groups.io <sdr19c@...>
Sent: 01 June 2022 15:28 To: Simon Brown <main@SDR-Radio.groups.io> Subject: Re: [SDR-Radio] My Computer Drifts! Hi Simon,
> I run a small ASUS NUC with an AMD 4700U inside. the time drifts by a few seconds during an 8 hour period! Maybe the standard frequency of your main power supply is not very stable on 50 Hz. Check, if other machines have this deviation also or not. > Shirley there's a free program on the web i can use to sync with NTP? I can recommend NetTime, very tiny, run on all Win OS incl. Win 11: https://www.timesynctool.com/ 73, Uwe -- - + - + -
Please use https://forum.sdr-radio.com:4499/ when posting questions or problems. |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Excellent, will give it a go.
From: main@SDR-Radio.groups.io <main@SDR-Radio.groups.io> on behalf of Noel via groups.io <pnoelw@...>
Sent: 01 June 2022 15:23 To: main@SDR-Radio.groups.io <main@SDR-Radio.groups.io> Subject: Re: [SDR-Radio] My Computer Drifts! On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 03:05 PM, Simon Brown wrote:
Shirley there's a free program on the web i can use to sync with NTP?This is the one you need Meinberg ......and stop calling me Shirley :-) That's an old one! -- Noel Clacton, southeast England N51.78 E1.14 Perseus, SDRPlay RSP2, Icom R8500 FCDPro+, BCT15X, AR8000. pa0rdt, mini-windom, discone -- - + - + -
Please use https://forum.sdr-radio.com:4499/ when posting questions or problems. |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Alan G4ZFQ
Shirley there's a free program on the web i can use to sync with NTP?Simon, I've not tried it yet but Windows itself has NTP to 1mS https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/networking/windows-time-service/configuring-systems-for-high-accuracy As others have said Meinberg is widely used. 73 Alan G4ZFQ |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Curt Faulk
Simon, I agree with the suggestions for Meinberg. I have used it for a long time and it is just excellent.
|
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Uwe Volk
Hi Simon,
I run a small ASUS NUC with an AMD 4700U inside. the time drifts by a few seconds during an 8 hour period!Maybe the standard frequency of your main power supply is not very stable on 50 Hz. Check, if other machines have this deviation also or not. Shirley there's a free program on the web i can use to sync with NTP?I can recommend NetTime, very tiny, run on all Win OS incl. Win 11: https://www.timesynctool.com/ 73, Uwe |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Noel
Sorry. This is the actual programme. Meinberg NTP The previous link was to a monitoring tool.
-- Noel Clacton, southeast England N51.78 E1.14 Perseus, SDRPlay RSP2, Icom R8500 FCDPro+, BCT15X, AR8000. pa0rdt, mini-windom, discone |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Brian Morrison
On Wed, 1 Jun 2022 14:05:28 +0000
"Simon Brown" <simon@...> wrote: Well,Meinberg is used a lot on Windows systems. -- Brian G8SEZ |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Noel
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 03:05 PM, Simon Brown wrote:
Shirley there's a free program on the web i can use to sync with NTP?This is the one you need Meinberg ......and stop calling me Shirley :-) That's an old one! -- Noel Clacton, southeast England N51.78 E1.14 Perseus, SDRPlay RSP2, Icom R8500 FCDPro+, BCT15X, AR8000. pa0rdt, mini-windom, discone |
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
Tony_AD0VC
When I started using JT65 back when, I used Thinking Man Software - Dimension 4 v5.3 (thinkman.com) to sync my PC. Since then I have been fine with the sync built into windows (right click on time in the task
bar). Maybe the windows version updates too infrequently for you.
Tony
From: main@SDR-Radio.groups.io <main@SDR-Radio.groups.io> on behalf of Simon Brown <simon@...>
Sent: Wednesday, June 1, 2022 8:05 AM To: main@sdr-radio.groups.io <main@sdr-radio.groups.io> Subject: [SDR-Radio] My Computer Drifts! Well,
I run a small ASUS NUC with an AMD 4700U inside. the time drifts by a few seconds during an 8 hour period!
Shirley there's a free program on the web i can use to sync with NTP?
-- - + - + -
Please use https://forum.sdr-radio.com:4499/ when posting questions or problems.
|
|
|
|
Re: My Computer Drifts!
john
We used to use Dimension4 I think it was called to sync servers(NT4) in work before we started using an internal NTP server. If Windows, then maybe a scheduled task to resync time every x hours or *nix and use Cron to sync time? and dont call me Shirley. ta john m0vaz On 1 June 2022 at 15:05:28 +01:00, Simon Brown <simon@...> wrote:
|
|
|
|
My Computer Drifts!
Well,
I run a small ASUS NUC with an AMD 4700U inside. the time drifts by a few seconds during an 8 hour period!
Shirley there's a free program on the web i can use to sync with NTP?
-- - + - + -
Please use https://forum.sdr-radio.com:4499/ when posting questions or problems. |
|
|
|
Re: PLUTO CRASHES
#adalmpluto
Remind me, you're using a Pluto Plus or a standard Pluto?
From: main@SDR-Radio.groups.io <main@SDR-Radio.groups.io> on behalf of Dionisis “Dennis” Drakopoulos via groups.io <sv1cdn@...>
Sent: 01 June 2022 14:44 To: main@SDR-Radio.groups.io <main@SDR-Radio.groups.io> Subject: Re: [SDR-Radio] PLUTO CRASHES #adalmpluto [Edited Message Follows] For what is worth, SDR CONSOLE finally got up and running!
Had to replace libusb-1.0.dll with version 1.0.26.11724 from team's sourceforge space:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/libusb/
73! -- - + - + -
Please use https://forum.sdr-radio.com:4499/ when posting questions or problems. |
|
|
|
Re: PLUTO CRASHES
#adalmpluto
For what is worth, SDR CONSOLE finally got up and running!
Had to replace libusb-1.0.dll with version 1.0.26.11724 from team's sourceforge space: https://sourceforge.net/projects/libusb/ 73! |
|
|