Pierow’s Prattle

ETH Zürich has a write-up about building an inexpensive embedded Stratum 1 time server using a PC Engines ALIX board and a Garmin GPS 18x OEM (aprx $50) which supports the highly accurate one-pulse-per-second (PPS) output.

• The LinuxPPS Project – An implementation of the Pulse Per Second (PPS) API for GNU/Linux version 2.6
• Adding a FreeBSD NTP server based on an GPS 18 LVC device
• Wolfgang S. Rupprecht’s GPS Hacks

The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service has decided to add an additional second to the clock for 2008 based on its monitoring of the Earth’s rotation.  The additional second will be added at 23:59:59 GMT in order to keep UTC in sync with the position of the sun above the Earth.  This is the 24th second to be added to UTC since 1972, when the practice began.

[Full Article at Reuters UK]