I'm tempted to take this in stages, using a reasonably large box, giving room for a number of items. My thoughts are:
1) Buy the SRS PRS10 and assume that is *right* for the purpose of the inital aim, which was to sync my pendulum clock. Errors in the rubidium source should be small.
I'll leave the GPS initially - I have a lot of expenses at the minute.
2) Put some sealed lead acid batteries for backup - I suffer a lot of power failures at home. A friend has offered me a charger for 24V batteries.
3) Sync the pendulum clock to a crystal (either TCXO or perhaps an OCXO) - the latter being a bit over the top. This is going to be the hard part, especially as I will need a PIC to get 1 point something Hz, and I have not used PICs before.
This will go in its own box.
5) Add an HP 10811A + Brooks Shera board to get low phase noise, syncing *not* to GPS, but to the PRS10. I have all the bits for the Brooks Shera board (apart from a few cheap ICs), so the cost in doing this is small.
6) Finally add a GPS, which should give me the low phase noise of the 10811A, with a decent holdover time from the PRS10 if there is no GPS signal.
I suspect I could fit that lot (apart from 3 which I want sepparte) in a 3U rack.
I'd need to synchonise the power-up of the two ovens as the power supply I have (24V, 2.4A) would not be capable of starting both ovens at the same time. The PRS10 take 2.2A on startup, but only 0.6A when running. Hence the 2.4A power supply should be okay in running both the PRS10 and the HP 10811A, but *not* starting them together.
Any thoughts on that sort of idea above?
Any obvious flaws?? Apart from the fact it is getting more and more expensive, and less and less related to the initial aim of making a couple of hundred year old pendulum clock more accurate!!!
Dr. David Kirkby
Brooke Clarke wrote:
Hi Tom:
Don't forget that SRS has the free PC program Rbmon that talks to the PRS10, although it's listed with a different Rb product.
73,
Brooke
Tom Van Baak wrote:
Why would it be cheaper than building Brook Shera's unit? You still need all the same electronics, but a more expensive oscillator (I assume the PRS10 is going to cost more than an HP 18011A.)
The data sheet for the PRS10 is at: http://www.thinksrs.com/products/PRS10.htm http://www.thinksrs.com/downloads/PDFs/Manuals/PRS10m.pdf
How does the short term phase noise of the PRS10's compare with the HP 10811A? I guess in the long term, they will both be the same if you link them to a GPS source, but short term you have said will be dominated by the crystal oscillator.
The ADEV for a PRS10 at 1 to 10 seconds is on the order of 1e-11 making it 10x worse than the 10811 inside a Z3801A. So the choice depends on what you want to use the output of your GPSDO for.
I guess a current unit is likely to be better than a 20-30 year old one.
Not necessarily true. Some of the best oscillators in the world were made 30 to 40 years ago. On the other hand, you can't beat a PRS10 for features. Check out the manual for the list of commands.
/tvb
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-- Dr. David Kirkby PhD CEng MIEE, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Medical Physics, Mallet Place Engineering Building, Gower St, University College London, London WC1E 6BT.
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