Folks,

a regular adjustment of the time of your MetRec PC is necessary, since the
computer time drifts significantly over time. In central europe, the time is
usually synchronized against the German DCF-77 time signal, which is send at
long wave radio and can be received in most parts of Europe (usually at a radius
of ~1000 km from Frakfurt/M.).

MetRec offers two options to sync to a time signal:

* using the Cuno time inserter: It insertes the time to the video image, which
is then recognized by MetRec. The advantage is, that it works also without
DCF-77 (you can use a GPS receiver as time base), but on the other hand it's not
cheap (>200 ?) and it's currently not working with automated systems (the digits
are slowly drifting with time, and you have to measure their positions manually
before MetRec starts)
* using a DCF computer clock by Conrad Electronic: This was a nice and cheap
device, but it's has not been sold anymore for 5 years

Now I found another cheap option that is comparable to the Conrad DCF clock.
It's a DCF-77 time signal receiver that is plugged to your serial port (9-pin).
Using a little command line DOS tool you can add in your autoexec.bat, you read
out the current DCF time when the computer starts up, and adjust the PC time.
Currently you need to use this external tool for synchronization, but I hope to
find out how to communicate with the receiver, and incorporate it like the
Conrad clock directly in MetRec.

The clock is not produced and supported anymore, but I can still get it in
larger quantities and it's even cheaper than the Conrad clock was. I bought and
tested one - it's working fine. So I decided to buy these for my own automated
cameras. If you are interested as well, please, let me know how many receiver
you like to have. It would cost you 15? plus shipment. Other receivers available
at the market start at 50?!

Best,
Sirko

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* Sirko Molau * *
* Abenstalstr. 13b * __ *
* D-84072 Seysdorf * " 2B v 2B " *
* Germany * *
* phone: +49-8752-869438 * Shakespeare *
* email: sirko@... * *
* www : www.molau.de * *
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