GPS Network Time Server??

Can anyone recommend an economical GPS satelite receiver? I only need to synchronize 1 PC, so I hate to buy an arbiter NTP module $$$

Any input/suggestions are appreciated!

I use these from Garmin GPS16-HVS, 24V supply and a long cable that means you can easily mount them. You can download an application from Garmin so that you can program it to only give out just one GPS sentence. You will need to do some parsing of the received data to get at the time and then convert that from text to numbers. This is one of the sentences that GPS receivers give out:

$GPGGA,082440,5333.3975,N,00509.2915,W,1,04,1.9,86.3,M,49.4,M,,*69

The numbers you need are the first set and are hours. minutes and seconds (082440) 08am 24mins 40secs and are in UTC/GMT time so you will need to subtract 5-8 hours from this depending on your time zone in the US. It also might be useful to do the checksum calculation so that you know the time is correct, you have to 'exclusive or' the characters and that should match the last two digits in the sentence.

Just noticed you said PC and not PLC so this may not apply to your situation but it seems a shame not to post it after all this typing.

Bryan

At the risk of being obvious - if the PC is reliably connected to the network you might use a software app to sync the time (just do a Google search on "accurate network time"). Lots of apps will synch you to very accurate atomic clocks and should include network delay, etc.

Unfortunately an internet connection is not available. But I did find a PCI card which seems to be cheaper than other solutions.

Here is a link: http://www.meinberg.de/english/products/gps170pci.htm

BryanG, I assume that the same equipment can be tied to a PC. There may be some drivers available from Garmin that allow you to sync the PC. I will look into it and let you know if I come up with anything.

BryanG, I assume that the same equipment can be tied to a PC.

Click to expand...

The output is RS232 so it will work with pretty much anything, you can set all the normal RS232 settings from the Garmin app and also how often the sensor transmits a string. I don't remember that there was an option to set the PC time from a GPS sensor but then again I wasn't looking for it. It shouldn't be too tough to write a small program to read the string and set the clock. I am pretty sure I could do it on a Linux system but I don't know the system calls for a Windows setup.

Bryan