The reason I bought my Photon was to create a device for setting the so-called “atomic” wall clock in our house that rarely is able to detect the WWVB radio signal broadcast from Fort Collins, CO.
Getting a reference time to use will be easy enough. I have already successfully used the SparkTime example code to sync with an NTP source and display the results using Serial functions.
The challenge for me is to generate the actual radio signal that the clock will in turn use to set itself. I found instructions for doing this with an ATtiny45, but though I have years of experience writing software, I am truly a beginner when it comes to electronics and embedded programming.
I am hoping someone can at least get me pointed in the right direction with this, since I think it will be a fun project that won’t require much code (though it will likely be pretty advanced coding).
I have a couple initial questions, which will probably illustrate my ignorance in this realm:
- The Photon is a 3.3v device, while the ATtiny appears to be 5v. Is it likely I will need to boost the voltage of the output in order for the clock to detect it?
- Will I need to use interrupts in order to generate a 60 khz signal? I’ve read that interrupts may only be used with code that executes quickly and I would execute the SparkTime infrequently and separately, so I think there wouldn’t be a conflict there. However, I’ve also read that the WWVB signal transmits at 1 bit per second over 60 seconds, which wouldn’t exactly constitute quickly-executing code.
Thanks for your help!
Matt