I’ve made a few posts over the years about using GPS devices for precision timekeeping for NTP Stratum 1 servers, and recently the topic came up again with some colleagues to potentially build another one.
My previous builds have been based on Raspberry Pi computers, but with the Pis currently being unobtainium, and some recent drama around their foundation, I got to thinking about alternatives for building a Stratum 1.
Of course, you can buy Stratum 1 servers from various vendors, but their prices are much higher than I’m interested in. Likewise you can buy inexpensive off the shelf GPS devices to plug into USB or a serial port, but they often don’t properly expose the precise timing signals required. Mostly for the enjoyment of it, I decided to build a middle-ground device that would connect to either a USB or RS232 serial port, properly expose the timing signals, and pair it with some good documentation on how to set this up with any linux server.
The design, code, and instructions are open source. You can find them on my GitHub repository.
Pingback: GPS Timing Over USB | DigitalNigel