Rubidium frequency standard enclosure
Kenneth builds an enclosure and power supply for a “cheap” rubidium frequency standard. Rubidium standards are used for high precision clocks, and time keeping with a drift of only 6ms a year.
This entry was posted in DIY, hacks and tagged DIY, Rubidium standard.Normally, rubidium standards are very expensive, but it is possible to find these modules on eBay for $50-$100 as they come out of decommissioned equipment (such as cell phone towers, which need this level of time stability). On a hobbyist bench like my own, these standards are useful as a very good time base to calibrate other oscillators against. They’re also useful because 10MHz is the standard time base used by bench test equipment, so this standard can be used to drive frequency counters and spectrum analyzers via their time base ports so that they are more precise than with their stock internal 10MHz oscillators.
Comments
What is PPL?
Is that Phase Phock Loop?
It is used to lock PeoPLe out of your workshop when you are busy…
Yep, the standard phase locks the 10MHz from a crystal to the 6.834682610904324 GHz hyperfine transition of Rubidium in a gas discharge tube.
Damn… Thanks for the catch.
Nice enclosure! You can read more about these cheap rubidium standards at the wiki/FAQ I started on the ko4bb webpage; google for “fe5680a_faq”
Pulse Per Leapyear?
Pizza Programming Language?
http://www.onelook.com/?w=expand%3APPL&ls=a
Here you can see some thermal pictures of my rubidium frequency standard.
http://dangerousprototypes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3453&start=30#p35860
Its the same model Kenneth haves.