WWVB Receiver (Atomic Clock)

A short demonstration of WWVB receivers from HKW Elektronik out of Germany. WWVB is the LF (60 kHz) broadcast of the current time from the NIST cesium atomic clock in Boulder, CO. WWVB broadcasts the current time accurate to within 20 milliseconds of the atomic clock. While the broadcast antennas for WWVB are in Fort Collins, CO, the signal reaches as far as Hawaii and New York during at least part of the day (the signal reaches furthest during the night, due to less interference from other sources.)

I'll be connecting these receivers to an arduino in the next few days and begin to decode the time code information. Who knows, in the next few weeks I may even work on designing my vary own arduino shield for receiving the WWVB clock.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• electronics
• WWVB
• atomic clock
• arduino

[denelson83]

You recorded this video at 11:46 pm local time, I take it.

[lag1980]

Actually, if you watch the time code signal 50 seconds in to the video, you can see that the WWVB signal shows that the current time is 05:14 UTC, or 23:14 local time.

[alphaman1101]

HKW Electronics? Are you using the UE6011? ID LOVE to see the pinouts

[mulad]

Cool, best of luck with your upcoming creation!

I'm hoping to do some Arduino clock project eventually, which will include some sort of time source like WWVB, GPS, or some quick hack using XBee adapters or something. I've got a broken clock radio which happens to have an LCD with a little "atomic" symbol on it, even though the radio itself doesn't have a WWVB receiver, so I might be able to repurpose that old display module.

[denelson83]

I looked at it again and got 11:16 pm.  How in the heck did I get 46 minutes past the hour? My browser must have been irregularly freezing the video. *scratches head*