WWB is getting it budget cut and going off air after almost 100 years. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2018, 10:07:03 pm
content: Well we can expect this and lots of other things to lose as the government scramble to to try and fund 100% of the government with 2/3 the income. I don't think there will be any tax dollars "trickling down " to fund the WWV. And once we lose it its not ever coming back.For years this was a way to crudely test my shortwave radios to see how many WWV it could get or also see propagation vs a known signal on the different bands. I was also starting projects with telemetry with my first projects to see if they could get the time off the WWV. But I guess that and the millions of electronics that set their time, will be forced back into blinking 12:00 12:00. Was also a fun way to check the time as a small shortwave cracks out the time signal in the back ground at low volume if you wanted to check the time in your sleep with out putting on glasses or contacts, listening to the calming and mesmerizing sound of the clicks.The sad part is there is plenty of money to keep it going. I wonder how much private donations would have to be raised to keep it going. I personally wanted to visit it to just hear the strange noises it made while standing under the towers.Asshole doesn't even know what it is so he's just cutting budgets. As he said "I don't care about the debt or deficit and how its spiraling out of control, I won't be president when that happens." That's someone who cares more about the country then their own self image. What will the children listen to in their cages at the ICE camps without the WWV to keep them with a reference of how many months they have been there?This actually pisses me off.https://www.npr.org/2018/08/25/641835302/what-closing-a-government-radio-station-would-mean-for-your-clocksQuote

author: kj7e
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2018, 10:47:42 pm
content: Perhaps there is a business opportunity to produce an NTP to low power 60KHz broadcast device, to sync all of your home clocks.

author: djacobow
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2018, 10:59:53 pm
content: It is a shame.It reminds me a bit of when they shut down the LORAN chains. IMHO, this was a huge mistake, as they just didn't cost all that much to operate, and could have served nicely as a backup to GPS. Being a terrestrial system it would have totally different failure modes than GPS. Also, not having to rely on solar power, it could send a more powerful signal, much more difficult to jam than the fraction of a "bee's dick" power levels from GPS satellites.

author: Bryan
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2019, 09:54:58 am
content: Is there a update to this, was the budget passed to decommission the WWVB transmissions?

author: jfiresto
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2019, 01:20:23 pm
content: Wouldthishelp answer your question?

author: awallin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 10, 2019, 01:22:08 pm
content: Quote from: Bryan on August 10, 2019, 09:54:58 am"WWV, along with WWVB and WWVH, was recommended for defunding and elimination in NIST's Fiscal Year 2019 budget request. However, the final 2019 NIST budget preserved funding for the three stations."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWV_(radio_station)

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2019, 01:09:47 pm
content: Quote from: awallin on August 10, 2019, 01:22:08 pmAll the interesting stuff on SW is going away since I built my first radio in the 90's. Except the "reverend" staircase who spouts hateful jesus talk and end of world scenarios that never come true but yet they don't refund the money of the people tricked into the 2nd coming of Christ. There are also useful beacons for measuring propagation going away as they break. Seems dumb not to have a back up for GPS especially since its one CME away from going down.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2019, 01:59:42 pm
content: That sucks. How much can it cost to run this thing, and does it not have some useful military application so it can get sucked into the military budget? Another thing, does my clock use it:I've never set the time on this thing manually and probably wouldn't know how to. I think it always figured out daylight savings time by itself. A lot of people are going to be unpleasantly surprised if it gets shuttered and they sleep in or wake up an hour earlier when the time change occurs and they didn't know, assuming their alarm clock would work the same way it did for years before.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2019, 03:45:26 pm
content: Yes that little dish logo in the bottom right corner means it uses WWV to set itself.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2019, 04:02:49 pm
content: QuoteQuoteThe equivalent of shutting down the DoD for about 3 days if I did the calculation right.

author: ledtester
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2019, 04:10:00 pm
content: It's about 5secondsminutes of savings:(6.3 million) / (686 billion) * 365 * 24 * 60 = 4.8269...

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2019, 04:26:48 pm
content: Quote from: ledtester on August 14, 2019, 04:10:00 pmMinutes.

author: ledtester
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2019, 04:32:08 pm
content: I don't wear watches, but I did get this one years ago:

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2019, 04:45:32 pm
content: I have the idea that it is likely GPS that ate into the user base of WWV and WWVH. GPS have better time accuracy, and GPS receivers are commonplace enough (most smartphones have built-in GPS) and cheap enough (US$10 for a basic module.)Quote from: kj7e on December 10, 2018, 10:47:42 pmOr GPS (any GNSS really) to 60kHz. NTP requires Internet connection, but GPS can work entirely offline. It can even be a self-contained module with onboard solar panel and batteries for offline power. Such a self contained GPS to 60kHz module can be mounted outdoors on a pole (or left on the roof) and just work, requiring no cable to it and little maintenance.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2019, 05:00:01 pm
content: It would seem almost trivial to create a low-power transmitter on 60KHz to mimic the code from WWVB if it goes dark. Based on GPS time. The "Atomic Clocks" don't use the carrier frequency for a reference, AFAIK. They only use the modulated data.By "low power" I mean something of a few mW that would cover all the clocks in your house (or in the neighborhood, for that matter). The same cutbacks that put WWVB off the air would likely cut back on the number of FCC folk who could come out and hassle you for that.

author: ledtester
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2019, 05:18:19 pm
content: Quote from: Richard Crowley on August 14, 2019, 05:00:01 pme.g.:https://www.anishathalye.com/2016/12/26/micro-wwvb/Update: The article has this to say about the legality of transmitting on 60 KHz:Quote

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2019, 09:50:19 pm
content: Quote from: ledtester on August 14, 2019, 05:18:19 pmThat's a neat project. I am thinking somebody could do this with a RaspBerry Pi as well, and get internet time (if it's easier than using a GPS module) to modulate a 60 kHz signal to do the same. OH, wait a minute... look what I just found:https://hackaday.com/2018/09/10/no-signal-for-your-radio-controlled-watch-just-make-your-own-transmitter/

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2019, 10:01:04 pm
content: I'm with OP. WWV has always been my go to station for checking out a new receiver. Since the first vacuum tube regenerative model several decades ago in high school. It is the only one I know of that is always there and available on several bands. Easy to remember frequency and useful once you got tuned in.Maybe the ARRL could be the coordinator for a donation campaign to keep it going. Even though the 2019 battle seems to have been won, this will continue to be a target for cuts since the vast majority of people and close to 100% of lawmakers have no idea whether it has any value. I am forced to agree that for NIST it is no longer part of their primary mission, but it could be argued that it is part of one of their secondary missions - education.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2019, 12:52:40 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on August 14, 2019, 10:01:04 pmThe education perspective of WWV can be split between some other multi-band broadcaster and GPS.Here in China, in the 90s, the similar education purposes is split between local broadcasters for radio transmissions (I have even visited Shanghai Oriental TV once for that,) BPM for frequency standard (Shanghai is a special case here as Shanghai Observatory CAS maintains a few Beijing Time reference atomic clocks and is a contributor of National Time Service Center of China, indirectly participating in maintaining UTC, so that is used instead and is not taken over by Beidou,) and Dongfanghong-I for satellite communications. The current textbooks use telecom carriers for radio transmissions, but the frequency standard and satellite communications arms of the education is taken up by Beidou-II and Beidou-III systems. Beidou-II and Beidou-III together forms the Chinese equivalent of GPS, and there are combined receivers out there that can receive both GPS and Beidou signals, and incorporate them into the same geolocation equations.

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2019, 10:47:50 am
content: I can see how GPS/Galileo/Beidou will make radio time signals obsolete but there are a lot of devices out there which will also be rendered obsolete.In Europe we haveDSF77out of Germany. I have several clocks which are supposed to synchronize using DSF77 but they work very badly or not at all. I guess I am too far away and the antennas they have are crap.

author: Black Phoenix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2019, 11:23:15 am
content: Didn't the Casio Wave Ceptor is one that is also going to lose from the WWV going down?QuoteSo that means that a watch build for the WWVB will lose is use after the signal goes down, since it is done only to USA and not anywhere in the world, right?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 15, 2019, 11:37:20 am
content: Quote from: kj7e on December 10, 2018, 10:47:42 pmI was just looking into that actually, for atomic watches...I'm picturing a community network of low power transmitters all registered on a googly map website to show the coverage.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2019, 04:46:26 pm
content: Quote from: soldar on August 15, 2019, 10:47:50 am"A lot" is probably an understatement. There are hundreds of millions of devices, a majority of owners of which are probably completely unaware that their "atomic" clock relies on WWV to work.

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2019, 06:04:19 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on August 15, 2019, 04:46:26 pmYes, but such is the price of progress. When TV went digital millions of receivers were obsoleted and had to get a converter box. I suppose someone could make some money offering the GPS to 60 KHz "converter".The day they shut down Loran C they obsoleted my Loran C receiver which I liked and it had many of my routes memorized. Sometimes I would not mind stopping progress, or at least slowing it down a bit.My German clocks do not seem to receive DSF77 and I have to set them manually. Which means a few weeks late in changing from and to daylight saving time. Hopefully they will soon get rid of that idiocy.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2019, 11:20:41 pm
content: I've never really been a fan of the digital switchover for TV either, I got one of those converter boxes when they were essentially free, hooked it up and briefly marveled over the great picture quality on my old Trinitron TV downstairs. Then I quickly realized that modern broadcast TV is terrible between the heavy ad load and logo floating in the corner on all the channels and never actually used it again. Analog TV worked just fine and most people who care about HD have cable or satellite anyway. I cannot think of a single person I know who actually watches HD OTA TV.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 12:56:36 am
content: People of limited income and those outside of cable service watch it. We have it to cover satellite outages which come from many sources. Most commonly from contract disputes between the satellite networks and local channels. But also from solar storms, heavy weather and snow accumulation on the dish.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 01:02:36 am
content: Quote from: james_s on August 15, 2019, 11:20:41 pmThere are millions of us "cord-cutters" out here.I eschew satellite, cable, internet-based bulk providers. I only watch OTA.Note that OTA is virtually GUARANTEED to be higher-quality than the same signal from satellite, cable, or internet. Because it has much lower compression.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 01:52:46 am
content: Quote from: james_s on August 15, 2019, 11:20:41 pmThink of EEVBlog user Bud who did the last Stanley Cup and NBA seasons OTA style.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 06:25:48 am
content: Quote from: Richard Crowley on August 16, 2019, 01:02:36 amI'm a cord cutter and haven't had cable in ~20 years. Broadcast TV is garbage though IMO, network logos ruin the content and the increasing number of commercials makes it downright unwatchable. I've been 100% streaming for years, before that I bought a lot of used DVDs.Most of the people I work with are a bit younger than me and the vast majority of them are cord-nevers and 100% streaming. I don't think a lot of younger folks are even fully aware that OTA TV is a thing.Anyway my point is, did replacing of analog broadcast TV with digital HD really improve anything? Decent analog TVs produced a very nice picture, I still have my Sony XBR in the rec room and it looks fantastic playing SD content from DVDs.

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 07:15:44 am
content: Quote from: james_s on August 16, 2019, 06:25:48 amDigital TV freed up bandwidth. Also, analog TV sets produce a better picture with digital signal than with analog because the limitation was with the signal. I am still using a CRT TV I built myself in the early 1980s and it definitely has better definition with a good signal than with a bad signal.Programming is still crap though. And getting worse. We get what we demand.I have a friend who says: Digital TV? Umph! I have changed to the newer, better system of TV. The one where they don't have a picture. Radio I think they call it.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 05:42:41 pm
content: Quote from: rdl on August 14, 2019, 04:02:49 pmYou to do the math incorrectly to figure out trumps thinking. Like he was going to get medicare/ Social security to pay for itself by eliminating the fraud which is around <1%, So going from 100% to 99% = free. Like the new embassy in Israel that costs 20 billion that he negotiated down to 200 thousand dollars, to build. They are making it out of mud instead of gold. Makes sense.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 10:57:32 pm
content: Quote from: soldar on August 16, 2019, 07:15:44 amThe depressing part is what has happened to the market in nearly all types of media, everything from physical products to TV and radio content is more and more the same as everyone has figured out there's more profit in just copying everyone else's mediocrity than by gambling on unique content. What ruined TV for me is when all the channels started to have those stupid logos constantly overlaid in the corner, it's like a blob of snot on the screen that I can't wipe off and it drives me batty. Worse yet now they have animated banners that come on during another show, some of which even play sound. Those are the reason I cancelled cable many years ago and never looked back.As if that all wasn't enough, due to dwindling viewership they have started to cram in more ads to make up for it, so now they often cut out portions of shows and speed up others slightly to make room for one or two more ads. Genius move there, people stop watching so let's make the experience even worse to make up for it, so even more people stop watching.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 11:18:21 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on August 16, 2019, 10:57:32 pmI cancelled my cable in 2008 when I had to start paying for it. Before I only watched it because I got a free HD TV from family and got every channel including the playboy channel; I worked for the cable company and after a long day of dealing with TV? More TV! No thanks. I have been doing Netflix now just youtube premium, I get absolutely annoyed when I use TV now. Cant stand programs running on their own schedule, no pause and worst off commercials!!!! I haven't watched a commercial in years. .

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 11:57:34 pm
content: If someone offered me free cable I wouldn't bother to hook it up, there's simply nothing on that I want to watch, and having been ad-free for so long I find commercials absolutely intolerable. I used to have Netflix but they kept dropping stuff I wanted and focusing on original content I have no interest in, then they added that awful "feature" that auto-plays content while you're trying to read the description, I dumped them and now only use Plex. I'm back to buying used DVDs and blurays only now I rip them onto my server and pack them away in a box.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 12:39:04 am
content: Quote from: james_s on August 16, 2019, 11:57:34 pmHow big is your server? How many DVDs can it hold and what the advantage vs just popping in the blue ray player? Out of curiosity do you have a big monitor in your living room? That's what I used to do had a huge ~50" NEC HD monitor I hung on the wall and put a laptop under it to control it play movies on it.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 01:42:23 am
content: I never really liked cable TV. I'm not paying a lot for it only to have to break the DRM in order to watch it the way I want. And if I pay for it, it shouldn't have ads in the first place...

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 05:07:21 am
content: Since we are talking TV now, AFAIK OTA digital TV is going to make a comeback in China. Currently when analog OTA ended in most cities there is no replacement at all since most people have cable TV. (It is fairly cheap actually, about US$4 a month for basic cable that comes with most public channels and high definition versions of said channels.) Now the new technology that is going to replace cable would actually be IPTV over 5G, replacing both the urban cable network and the rural analog OTA network at the same time.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 05:55:50 am
content: I stopped having cable because they do not allow you to select channels you want. They always push stupid packages down your throat. Even to buy a package you must have the imbecilic Basic package first. Well, I connected the OTA with electronics- installed an outdoor antenna and wired it through a amplifier to get US channels from across lake Ontario. Saved me big money on the past sports season. NBA was paywalled in Canada, but i watched games translations OTA from Buffalo, US.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 03:48:35 pm
content: Quote from: Beamin on August 17, 2019, 12:39:04 amI have a 8TB drive, it has around 800 movies, several dozen TV series and my entire music collection. The advantage is the convenience of streaming, I don't have to get up and get out a disc, I can watch multiple shows/movies in one sitting, I can watch on any screen in the house, I can watch from my phone or tablet on the bus, I can watch on my laptop away from home. Anyone who has ever used Netflix, etc will quickly see the advantages, your whole collection is right there with the poster art, descriptions, search, tracking of what's been watched and what hasn't, I'd never go back to using physical media. I have a 60" TV in my livingroom as the primary display, it's a standard tv but is used exclusively as a monitor, I've never even tried the tuner.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 05:17:19 pm
content: I have cable TV because the cheapest way for me to get internet was in a package deal. The cable box is stored in a closet and has never been hooked up. I bought a new 42" 1080p TV about 5 years ago that I use as a monitor. I don't even know if the tuner works.Accessing all your music, movies and other video via computer frees you from having to deal with disks. I have a FreeNAS machine with two 4TB drives for storage and it's not even close to half full.

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 07:13:37 pm
content: It used to be, decades ago, that TV and radio would have huge transmitters covering a lot of territory. Now it seems the trend is to have more and smaller transmitters.I wonder if that might make sense with 60 KHz time signals. Instead of one huge transmitter have many smaller ones, fully automated, which would require close to no maintenance. They could get their time reference from GPS.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 07:21:27 pm
content: Quote from: soldar on August 17, 2019, 07:13:37 pmI really like the idea of LoRaWAN, capable of not only giving a time reference but also signaling small bits of data in either direction. The main criticism I have against it is the high cost of building a gateway. I would prefer if the cost is much lower so that more hobbyists would actually build gateways and help to improve the network.

author: wkb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2019, 08:12:22 pm
content: "Defunding"... sure.. some bloke needs the money to fly to his bloody golf resort every other day...

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2019, 02:51:27 pm
content: It seems there are mobile phone apps that simulate the time radio signal by creating a lower frequency in the speaker and the harmonics do the job. Ingenious.https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.houryo.wwvbemulator&hl=enhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.houryo.dcf77emulator&hl=enhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.houryo.jjyemulator&hl=en

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2019, 03:01:54 pm
content: Andreas Speiss did a video on home-made replacement for WWVB as well as DCF77 (Germany), MSF (UK), JJY (Japan), et.al.https://youtu.be/6SHGAEhnsYk

author: mark03
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2019, 06:08:31 pm
content: Generating your own longwave signal locally from GPS or the Internet is certainly an easy solution in case WWVB goes away, but IMO, running to the conclusion that this is "good enough" and we have no need for the legacy time broadcasts is a mistake. Why get rid of useful redundancy when it is so cheap? Besides, I bet you can keep a clock synced to a longwave signal on fewer mW/day than GPS. Certainly the electronics are simpler and cheaper, or would be if they were mass produced in anything like the numbers of GPS modules.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 22, 2019, 08:48:59 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on August 17, 2019, 03:48:35 pmSo what hardware/software do you use to link it all together? I wanted to do this at my mothers house using rpi's and my surplus of flat screens I own. Turns out you cant run Netflix on Linux or some thing made my plan not work.Do you just have windows and use the file manager to brose through? How do you track whats seen and whats not?Seems like there would be a market for such a device or multimedia software: You set up wifi and a computer to act as a main server then have nodes like rpi's to each TV/stereo all with wireless remotes or keyboards.On an unrelated note how do you hook an external monitor to a Microsoft surface that only has two USB ports in the keyboard base and one proprietary connector in the screen/tablet part? Playing kerbal is impossible on 4k at 13" or what ever screen size this is. That what was cool about my net book, when I got home I would hook it into the big monitor and use the netbook like the keyboard. Ah I miss my net book best form factor for a computer. Only way to make it better was if the keyboard still worked when unattached to the screen my surface doesn't even do that even though it could.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 22, 2019, 10:23:56 pm
content: Quote from: Beamin on September 22, 2019, 08:48:59 pmhttps://itsfoss.com/watch-netflix-in-ubuntu-linux/