We did have a sync generator with a crystal oven. I forget who made it. The sync generator has multiple outputs, the most important one being the color subcarrier, which is 3.579545 MHz for US NTSC (I still remember that number). It also puts out vertical and horizontal sweep signals. The stable timebase allowed us to free run for a day in case we lost the network signal for some reason. The network (NBC in our case) had a cesium clock in New York that they calibrated against WWV for time of day. We locked our clock to their signal, and all our equipment to our clock.
During a visit at the Belgian national broadcast corporation, they showed the central clock generator to which all video sources were synced. It suddenly all made sense. :-)
tw1984•3mo ago
for homelab application where extra space & power consumption is not a real concern, "temperature resistance" (tempco) is no longer relevant. you can get a constant temperature controller with +/- 0.01 degree range kind of spec for $65. verified using a reputable digital temperature sensor (outside the control loop) and the performance is pretty solid.
RossBencina•3mo ago
tverbeure•3mo ago
BTW, checkout my other comment in this thread about a GPSDO PCB with a resistor grid on the backside to evenly heat it.
rcxdude•3mo ago
tverbeure•3mo ago
rcxdude•3mo ago
How big and/or meaningful this effect is depends on what the thermal resistances in the system are, and where the temperature sensor is relative to what you want to temperature control. Generally you want a very conductive box that's then insulated very well, since this means the temperature won't vary much across the box (all of the temperature gradient between the heater and ambient is 'taken up' by the insulation). But if you're talking sufficiently high precision this can be quite difficult to achieve.
tverbeure•3mo ago
It makes me wonder if it would make sense to have a slow rotating fan inside the box. Not to get rid of excess heat but to compress the gradient against the well-insulated wall of the box. It's probably overkill for most cases, since there are other factor that influence frequency stability...
tverbeure•3mo ago
This DIY GPSDO has a self-heating PCB to keep the temperature constant: https://www.paulvdiyblogs.net/2023/06/gpsdo-version-4.html?m....
It’s a long blog post, but in the August 24, 2023 update, he mentions that the PCB temperature stays rock solid at 52.9C.