#Wwvb radio serial#
#Wwvb radio Pc#

The idea is to use smartphone, PC or laptop to convert time to 13.3333KHz sound signal. Although it only supports JJY-40 (40KHz signal) standard but that’s good enough since most recent radio controlled watches support all standards. Some smart guys in Japan came off another solution which so far I think it’s the best and easiest to use. It should not be too complicated but Unfortunately I don’t time for this effort. With Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection, a small program can be written and running on Raspberry Pi to get NTP time and synchronize Chronvertor automatically. Ideally, a microprocessor board such as Raspberry Pi is the best to replace the PC required in above setup. To make it practical for everyday use, more works need to be done.

#Wwvb radio serial#

The Chronvertor does have RS232 serial port so you can connect to PC and using a software utility called “NixieSync.exe”, you can synchronize Chronvertor with PC (of course PC has to be synchronized with NTP first). You would need to synchronize the Chronvertor with NTP time first. It works well with my Citizen AT4008-51E using WWVB standard. China BPC standard is not supported because it requires a license.īelow is the setup I made using additional bread board, a 12V to 5V DC convertor, a 500 ohms current limit resistor and DIY antenna. Since it has no amplifier, depending on your antenna design, the reliable working distance is about few inches only. You would need a DC power supply, some kind of antenna and a current limit resister. It’s a small standalone MCU module that converts time to time signal. One of the first ready solutions is Chronvertor, available from The solution is to make your own DIY radio signal “broadcasting”, at limited range of course so as it will not interrupt other public communication that fall into the same radio frequency. That’s case for Singapore which is where I am staying, although the watch is still working, but at medium quartz accuracy. If you stay anywhere more than 2000km from these places, it’s likely your radio controlled watch will not receive time signal or the signal quality is too weak. So far the location of the stations are southern Japan, US, Germany and central China. Ok what I’m going to talk today is what if you stay in a place or city where there is no radio time signal or stations around. Other functions it has include day, date, world dual time, AM/PM and battery level. Which standard it chooses to use depends on the city you selected.

The watch uses the latest Citizen movement (as of 2015) calibre H820 so it supports DCF-77, WWVB, BPC and JJY radio signal and stations. They are generally reasonable priced, just like the watch I recently acquired, a Citizen AT9037-05E, costs about USD300 only. Most of them have new generation rechargeable battery which can be charged by solar/light efficiently to power the quartz, movement and radio reception module. They are essentially medium accurate quartz watches (15 plus/minus seconds per month) but with built-in radio control signal reception to automatically synchronize themselves to radio time stations daily. They come with large number of design especially nice traditional analog design. In recent years radio controlled watches are getting popular thanks to the Japanese watch makers such as Citizen, Casio and Seiko. If you are reading this, it’s most likely you know what is radio controlled watch and possibly own one as well.