Quote:
Originally Posted by Stromaluski
Does this work in the US?
|
With a very long aerial it might
There's a list of the different transmission systems in each country here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_clock
In the UK, the original Audi receiver gets its signal from Germany I believe, presumably 'DCF77':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77
.. which isn't ideal because the signal from Germany here is weak. I have considered designing a UK 'convertor' as a interesting little electronics project (if I ever get time). All of the information is readily available so it should be fairly straightforward to do. A US version should be equally straightforward to design.
I believe the UK time signal is transmitted from NPL (MSF):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_from_NPL_(MSF)
And it seems the US time signal is transmitted from WWVB:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWVB
In theory, all you would need is either a WWVB (US) or NPL (UK) receiver, and a small microcontroller to perform the conversion. It should be quite easy to capture the output of an existing Audi receiver on an oscilloscope to confirm the code format, voltage requirements, etc and then work out how to emulate that, given a UK/US time-code signal.
For the time-code receiver part, there are numerous example circuits online and even some off-the-shelf kits available, for both the UK and US.
Edited to add: And if you're feeling really ambitious, you could design a receiver that is universal (or rather, 'global') by using a GPS receiver module as the time reference:
https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/gps-basics/all