Simple: the ublox will just work when you apply power and have a good antenna. The Motorola units have all sorts of idiosyncrasies, such as sometimes taking a very long time to achieve a lock, having the Almanac get corrupted and not lock when the battery backup is getting low, having significantly lower signal sensitivity (every dB can make a massive quality difference when running in challenged environments such as indoor receiption), and the uBlox are less expensive and support NMEA without having to send binary commands to the unit, and ordering a non-timing version of the GPS. The M12M timing versions do not support NMEA at all. The uBlox also solders down onto a PCB (simpler mounting) and is smaller. Lastly uBlox supports WAAS, which Motorola does not, and they achieve an initial lock much faster than M12M due to their massive parallel correlators. Shall we not forget that some uBlox units will support Gallileo with a firmware upgrade, and will also be able to be ordered with Glonass capability, and have a USB port built-in, and achieve pretty good timing performance in mobile applications that the M12M doesn't handle too well. That said the Motorola M12M or M12+ still have the best timing performance by far of the entire lot when operating, and operated correctly and in stationary mode. So in short: if you need the best timing performance and can fiddle with the GPS to make it work and do not need any bells and whistles, then get an M12M. If you need the easiest to use and fool-proof GPS: get uBlox. bye, Said In a message dated 2/1/2012 11:48:00 Pacific Standard Time, t...@leapsecond.com writes:
Perhaps this doesn't matter for a one-off hobbyist, but if you're making kits or products it can become an important factor. If you are inclined to experiment, just for the sake of exploring as many of us on the list are, then certainly you'd want to get a u-blox at some point. It doesn't have to be right away, but it is a pretty nice, very modern, ultra compact, timing receiver. If low cost is the object it's hard to beat that MG1613S board. /tvb > What is it these u-blox device can do that a cheaper Motorola Oncore > can't? Depending on the version the Oncore has for 50 to 5 nS > one-sigma error on the timing pulses and can do either 1PPS or 100PPS. > Single unit prices are from $18 to $60 very good documentation is > available. > > If the u-blox was somehow much better than a Trimble thunderbolt or > Motorola Oncore MT12T I'd buy one even at the above price. But > really these older GPSs are already at the single digtit of > nanoseconds level and I don't see room for improvement except.... > > If the L2 band is also used. This is the way to get order of > magnitude improments > > > Chris Albertson > Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
