[LinuxPPS] Trouble shooting OnCore issues.

[Hal V. Engel]

On Friday 06 June 2008 03:43:51 pm Remco den Besten wrote:
> Hello Hal,
>
> You passed your 'get your Oncore to work with LinuxPPS'-exam.
> Please do a site survey (I did it with WinOncore) to enter your exact
> location and heigth.
I will when I get a better antenna. I am currently using a cheap little mag 
mount that is sitting on the window sill.  It is about the size of a match 
book.  It seems to only have enough gain to allow the OnCore to pick up 
satellites that are almost over head (60 degree elevation or higher) but it is 
in a position that is far from optimal which clearly makes things worse. There 
are significant periods when it will not lock onto any satellites.  At first I 
didn't know what was going on when this happened since the only indication 
that it had lost lock is that the reach on the OnCore started getting lower 
but there was no indication why.  Is there someway to get some type of logging 
for this type of thing?  
In any case I don't think it makes sense to do a site survey right now since I 
should have a “new”antenna in a few days and I should have it installed 
shortly after that.   I used a hand held WASS GPS to take a reading for the 
position of the current antenna and this is what I am using for my position in 
the configuration file. 
I picked up a Larsen GPS0015 antenna from ebay for $14 plus shipping that is 
“Guaranteed to be in working condition”.  I looked around the net and the 
cheapest I found a new one of these for was $179 and most places wanted over 
$200.   If this one is working correctly then it will be a real good deal I 
think.  I am going to get a mount to go on the roof which should result in 
much better reception since up there the view to the far horizon covers about 
270 degrees and the other areas have trees that will block about 20 to 25 
degrees of elevation at the most.   This should allow the OnCore to track more 
satellites more of the time.

> Here's my /etc/ntp.oncore.0:
>
> remco at helium [/etc]> more ntp.oncore.0
> #
> # Oncore UT+ configuration file
> #
> # ----- mandatory lines ----------------
> MODE     1
> LON     5 12.7688
> LAT      52 23.6822
> HT       11.0 M
> # ----- optional lines ------------------
> DELAY    20 NS (<- 5 ns/m coax)
> CLEAR
> #HARDPPS
> SHMEM  /var/log/ntpstats/oncore.0
> MASK 0
> TRAIM YES
>
> I think that Reg, you, and I are now the Three Oncore-LinuxPPS Musketeers!
>
> Nice to have you with us!
>
> Regards,
>
> Remco
>
>
>   This morning I played around with /etc/ntp.oncore.0 and found that I had
> to remove the HARDPPS setting. Ntp now starts without issues. Is this a
> result of having the low level IRQ patches installed?
>
>
>   At this point it appears that I have things working and I am waiting to
> see how well ntp phase locks. But here is what things look like now.
>
>
>  
> 
===========================================================================
>===
>
>   *GPS_ONCORE(0) .GPS. 0 l 7 16 377 0.000 -0.205 0.089
>
>   +enigma.wiredgoa 209.81.9.7 2 u 55 64 77 20.224 -0.920 8.068
>
>   +clock-a.develoo 209.81.9.7 2 u 47 64 77 23.324 -0.345 6.644
>
>   -mewmie.mainecoo 63.192.96.10 2 u 50 64 77 23.141 1.341 7.762
>
>
>   Hal

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