hzeller / txtempus

A DCF77, WWVB, JJY and MSF clock LF-band signal transmitter using the Raspberry Pi
GNU General Public License v3.0
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[Suggestion] Removal of attenuation pin #34

Open harlock974 opened 1 year ago

harlock974 commented 1 year ago

I use txtempus with a Raspberry Pi Model B and an amplifier like the one described in issue #8, with an AM receiver antenna . My radio controlled watch is a Casio G-Shock GW-5500-1.

While playing with a fictitious time envelope (created by txtempus) and an Arduino, I notice that it doesn't seem mandatory to attenuate the carrier for any of the time services. One could simply switch it off as with MSF.

This configuration has some advantages :

This change could be easily tested in txtempus : simply replace LOW by OFF in GetModulationForSecond function in dcf77-source.cc, jjy-source.cc and wwvb-source.cc.

The hardware described in issue #8 could still be used as is. GPIO17 is no longer used so R2 can be removed.

For more simplification T1 could be replaced by a N mosfet with gate directly connected to GPIO4. You'll then have this 3 components circuit :

MOSFET_OSCILLATOR_JJY40 EMF

DSC_4398s The hairy 3 components circuit

As small mosfets like BS270 can handle up to 250 mA, you can design a more powerful emitter with two complementary mosfets as a NOT gate and a lower value resistor :

DUAL-MOSFET_OSCILLATOR_JJY40s

I successfully tested these circuits with JJY40 et DCF77 signals and reached a range of ten meters with JJY40 and the dual mosfet configuration.

DSC_4399s G-Shock strong reception (L3)