I also received mine. I have it hooked up to a Beaglebone Black (BBB) running Python for control of the ES100. Since the BBB is a 3.3V device, no issues with the Voltage of the interfaces. On the second floor of a house in Austin, TX, so far, it provides the time every time I ask it (about a 2 minute process for the ES100.)
There is a deep drop in WWVB signal here every day at sunrise and sunset, when the AM receivers will temporarily stop receiving. I want to explore what happens to the ES100 during these signal nulls. Learnings so far: The chip does not accept a concatenated I2C read transaction. (That is, write the number of the desired register, then read the register, in a single transaction.) You must do the register write, then a separate read transaction to get the data. This the first time I have encountered an I2C chip that behaves this way. Upon re-reading the data sheet, this is documented. No big deal, but if you are having problems reading the I2C registers, split the transaction into two. The 6 pin JST connector will not reliably accept a standard 0.1 inch plug. I had to remove the JST connector and replace it with a 0.1 inch header, to get a reliable connection with a 0.1 inch 6 pin socket. The pin lengths in a 0.1 inch JST connector are shorter than in a standard 0.1 inch header. I am having some kind of timing read race condition, such that if I trigger the I2C reads from the fall of the IRQ line, I get all zeros, which was the previous contents. Apparently the BBB, which is a 1 GHz processor, can get to the I2C registers faster than the ES100 updates them after the ES100 drops the IRQ line. So, a small read delay is needed. Next step is to time the IRQ against a known time source. The data sheet says the IRQ time accuracy is +/- 100 ms. So intended for setting the display of a human readable clock face, not "time-nuttery" class performance. The ES100 reliably reports time, on request, in a location and at a time of day where an AM receiver performance is spotty, so the benefits of the phase modulation plus error detection-correction are real. --- Graham == _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.