Precision vs Accuracy: A Clock

I was inspired by this watch face design (I think that's the original version) and by the arrival of a "OCXO", a very reliable time keeping circuit, to finally make an electronic clock.

Accuracy: Between hardware and software tuning, the OCXO keeps time with an accuracy of possibly better than 100 microseconds per day (loses or gains well less than a half second per year) (Yes, I'm deliberately ignoring a lot about crystal aging here!)

Precision: The time displayed is to the nearest minute, and the touchscreen setting mechanism is (deliberately?) poor, making it hard to set the time closer than +- 2 minutes or so. Oh, and it takes a good fraction of a second to update the screen anytime it changes. (The best way to set it seems to be to wait until a few seconds before 6AM/6PM and plug it in, since it boots with that time showing)

The clock consists of:

• A PyBoard running micropython
• A touchscreen LCD and controller
• A 10MHz OCXO frequency reference

.. all in a 3d printed enclosure that's not quite the right size.

Along the way, I added an even more accurate time source to a Raspberry PI (GPS with PPS) so that I could even measure the accuracy of the OCXO, and discovered I even have a GPS module which was negatively affected by the GPS rollover that occurred in April of this year (the second 1024-week rollover). This leads to a surprising sequence of clock arithmetic, and finally gpsd decides the GPS is returning a date sometime back in 1963.

Entry first conceived on 3 June 2019, 1:17 UTC, last modified on 9 June 2019, 1:04 UTC
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