Paradise ponders: finishing touches and beginnings...

Paradise ponders: finishing touches and beginnings...  I woke up this morning feeling pretty lousy – mainly because I was running a fever – but by the end of the day my temperature was nearly normal, and I was feeling ok.  Debbie is continuing to get better as well.

Today the special battery arrived for the alarm panel (part of the much-bigger-than-expected gate sensor project).  This was the last piece I needed to complete the whole project.  I installed it, expecting instant gratification, but I still was getting a low battery alarm.  Dang!  On the off chance that the battery wasn't shipped fully charged, I decided to wait a few hours before troubleshooting.  Glad I did!  About two hours after I installed the battery, my low battery alarm went away.  Yay!  Everything is now working properly – quite a relief after all the trials and tribulations it took to get the right parts.  Now I have a new skill: programming Ademco/Honeywell alarm panels.  For a geek, that's roughly the equivalent of an auto mechanic understanding how to rebuild a 1927 Ford's engine – interesting, possibly even cool, but pretty much worthless in the real world.

I also got started on my stratum 1 NTP server project, mentioned in an earlier post.  I configured a new Raspberry Pi 3b to run as a standalone server, then followed these directions to get a GPS receiver working and configured as an NTP server referencing the PPS signal put out by the GPS board.  That's all working, more or less on the first try, much to my amazement.  I'm having some trouble at the moment with a little detail: configuring the GPS board as a stationary GPS device, rather than a portable one.  In the stationary mode, the timing output is even more accurate, and it will collect a long-term average of its position that's more accurate than the usual GPS mode.  That little detail, plus mounting the antenna on the roof, is all I have left to get my stratum 1 NTP server into a usable state.  I'm going to make a wooden case for it as well, but obviously that doesn't affect its function...