[ntp:questions] Re: WWV audio driver, FreeBSD, Can't seem to get it going

David L. Mills mills at udel.edu
Tue Jun 7 18:18:18 UTC 2005


Danny, et al,

There is a good deal of electrical engineering theory and practice in 
the WWV/H and CHU and IRIG audio drivers. In fact, I use those drivers 
as examples of optimum demodulation/decoding in my course on 
digital/analog communications engineering. I have no problem should 
somebody send a bug report to bugzilla, but the only person to fix 
problems with the audio drivers will be me. As I don't read bugzilla 
reports directly, the best course is to send reports about the audio 
drivers directly to me and, in particular, to this newsgroup.

Dave

mayer wrote:

> Roger, if you can file a bug report with bugzilla and attach
> your changes we can ask Dave to look at it and integrate it with
> the code base. It sounds like you did an excellent job of
> fixing things.
> 
> Danny
> 
> ----- Original Message Follows -----
> 
>>Hi all.
>>
>>I haven't done an update in a week or two, so thought I would update
>>everyone on whats going on.
>>
>>I bought an SB card, but the snd_driver load didn't even see it, so
>>I put the 'white box' special back in.  After restarting, I saw lots
>>more action.  Started getting wwv3 and 4 messages, but it still would
>>not quite get happy.  After an hour or so, it even lost minute sync
>>and did a full restart.  Never again did it get any better.
>>
>>On a hunch, opening up the case and voila.  Hot.  Bad fan.
>>I replace (er, kludge) some fans.  Things get better, for a while,
>>and even set the clock once, before getting unhappy.  Even days of
>>running with s9+ WWV signals would not fully sync.
>>
>>So, I start wrapping my head around the refclock_wwv driver. 
>>(Actually it
>>was more like it was wrapping itself around _my_ head, but I digress.
>>At least I started understanding the sequence of the debug messages,
>>and
>>what to watch for.  I even added one myself to watch the watchcat
>>variable.
>>
>>The WWV docs say the 100Hz 1bps data is at 50% modulation.  This does
>>not correspond to the source code, so I changed the value of DGAIN
>>from 10 to 2.  I varified the levels with a scope.  It is 50% of the
>>tick levels.
>>
>>Seems better, but still not there yet.
>>
>>Today, in frustration, I find another scrapbin audio card.  Another
>>one that
>>that the snd_driver load wouldn't find. :(
>>
>>So, I put the semi-working on back in, rebooted, and I'll be damned.
>>It progressed non-stop from Minute sync (took 2 minutes) directly to
>>second sync.  3 minutes later it had all the digits.  After it had
>>seen all the digits with high certainty, it set the clock and stayed
>>there. Total elapsed time about 20 minutes.  It then proceeded to ramp
>>up the audio clock freq updates to 1024 and is happy as a lark!!
>>
>>I'm writing this some 5 or 6 hours after the lock.  I'm still seeing
>>clockstat output like:
>>
>>53528 14520.008 127.127.36.0  0 2005 158 04:02:00  D -6 0 127 WV15 21
>>5 88.0 1024
>>53528 14522.016 127.127.36.0 wwv5 001f 175 4924 3207/34.4 5678/18.2
>>WV15 fe91 37 3514/40.0 WH15 0002 19 1895/33.3
>>
>>Which is very good.  It is starting to take some data hits though.
>>
>>It is starting to fall off compared to a few hours ago.  This is
>>expected.
>>Propagation on 15 Mhz is starting to drop off to CO.  10 would be
>>better.
>>The Traconex receiver is not very agressive at checking better freqs.
>>It
>>has to really get weak.
>>
>>Anyway, I'd like to tune the fudgetime value now to match the GPSs,
>>but it probably won't relock.  Wish I knew what made it do it today.
>>
>>          Roger
> 
> 



More information about the questions mailing list