Electronics > Metrology

Any decent MSF receiver projects out there?

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djsb:
Are there any MSF (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_from_NPL_(MSF)) receiver projects that anyone knows about? Is there anything that can make use of any digital information that is transmitted? Are the MSF receiver modules from China any good? I know that these MSF receivers are now probably redundant due to GPS, but maybe they are useful as a backup reference. Any thoughts?

David.


PS Has anyone in the UK made use of the WWV transmissions from NIST in the USA?

jpanhalt:
Do you want a clock or a receiver to monitor?

In the former instance, look for "atomic clocks."  They are cheap and are a typical clock that periodically (e.g., once a night) captures the time signal and self-correct.

If you want to build a receiver, consider 4 options:
1) Harvest one from an atomic clock
2) Buy a kit.  They used to be common (e.g., CMMR-6), but that source has dried up.  Here's another source: http://www.auroralchorus.com/wr3gx2.htm
3) Buy an SDR dongle/receiver
4) Roll your own.  See SID image

I did all four and the journey was fun, particularly writing the code to decode the signal, which in the US is WWVB.  Attached are pictures of my antenna, receiver decoder, and a simple schematic.

Once the fun was over, I just bought a very inexpensive "atomic" clock and keep it next to my workbench.

mendip_discovery:
I already have a NTP service from my Lightning Detector but I plan to go GPSDO soon but would be fun to play with MSF as well. Compare the 3.

Though I have lots of ideas not enough to action them all.

tomnut:
This project uses a Raspberry Pi Pico as a direct sampling receiver, DSP and time decoder. This kind of minimalism pleases me greatly :)

https://www.elektormagazine.com/articles/raspberry-pi-pico-makes-an-msfsdr
Source code might be here: https://www.elektormagazine.com/magazine/elektor-260/60555

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