3 comments

  • JKCalhoun19 minutes ago
    No mention of the cost of the CSAC GPSDO (only that it&#x27;s &quot;not cheap&quot;).<p>Too bad you couldn&#x27;t hack the Americium module from a smoke detector and create a DIY atomic oscillator. Cesium seems to be preferred. (And I know nothing about this sort of thing.)<p>(EDIT: chatting with an LLM… I realize I had assumed that &quot;atomic clocks&quot; meant radioactive and so suggested Americium because it is easy to obtain. LLM <i>schooled me</i> and suggested &quot;Rubidium oscillator modules&quot; instead since they come up for a few hundred dollars or so on eBay. Still not the DIY approach I had hoped for—I think I am still channelling the old &quot;Amateur Scientist&quot; column from <i>Scientific American</i> from the day.)
    • geerlingguy13 minutes ago
      Typically high hundreds &#x2F; low thousands for a used GPSDO with a CSAC.<p>And Americium is not as useful for a timing reference, as it&#x27;s not as stable as Rubidium and a lot less safe to handle. Otherwise time nuts would hoard cheap smoke detectors :)
  • geerlingguy15 minutes ago
    I don&#x27;t believe it&#x27;s necessary to have multiple GPS antennas (one per device), unless signal path redundancy is required. A good GPS distribution box like from Time Machines or GPS Source can split the antenna signal to many devices without an issue.<p>A signal distribution box used from eBay is a lot cheaper than a good outdoor GPS antenna!<p>Though if you have enough cable and enough antennas already, no harm in having a little array like in OP.
  • mzs35 minutes ago
    I wonder how, if at all, you can improve precision with 4 stratum-1 clocks like he author has.