Cristiano Monteiro's ESP8266-Powered Stratum 1 NTP Server Packs Battery Power for On-The-Go Use

Built around a NodeMCU Amica development board, this GPS-backed NTP server keeps on ticking even when there's no mains power source.

Gareth Halfacree
3 years ago β€’ Clocks / Internet of Things

Solutions architect Cristiano Monteiro has built a timing solution with a difference: His compact Stratum 1 network time protocol (NTP) server has a built-in battery, letting it serve accurate time information over Wi-Fi wherever he goes.

"My hands-on approach to dissecting IoT from the inside led me to the endeavor of fulfilling a long-time dream of having an on-site Stratum 1 Network Time Protocol (NTP) server," Monteiro explains. "NTP is the decades-old synchronization protocol that keeps networked computer clocks accurate."

"The idea of using GPS as time sources is not new, there are dozens of commercial products available doing exactly that. But my goal is to make it cheap, accurate, self-contained, dual powered (mains and batteries), wireless-enabled, and portable to use on the field in my HAM radio activities. Powered by the ever-expanding universe of microcontroller units, this goal is closer than ever."

Monteiro turned to the Espressif ESP8266-based NodeMCU Amica microcontroller development board to drive his compact clock, adding a DS3231 real-time clock module and a u-blox Neo-6M V2 GPS receiver β€” complete with pulse per second (PPS) support on a dedicated pin.

To keep everything portable, Monteiro turned to a dual power source: an 18650 lithium-ion call connected to a 5V step-up module, which can be charged while near a suitable mains power source. The software is developed in the Arduino IDE, and the whole unit housed in a commercial Patola PB-205 case with custom-cut acrylic face.

Monteiro has written the project up on LinkedIn, with the source code and design files published to GitHub under the permissive MIT license.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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