I oftentimes find myself wondering what might be the equivalent of this sort of electronics hackery in the world of software.<p>It's not uncommon for me to see engineer friends of mine working on these sorts of projects and to find myself envying the <i>apparent</i> complexity of such projects - nothing (kernel hacks, ATMEGA projects, large C++ (<i>shudder</i>) systems, crypto/security work, ...) feels as though it requires the same level of knowledge/expertise as working on even relatively simple engineer's projects like this.<p>Might this just be a standard insider's view of one's own field?<p>To put it in context, Alec (M0TEI) is a student of engineering at Cambridge and a friend.
Has an NSN, so it's military. Also, it doesn't look like it was ever used (and/or recently-manufactured. although if they use the pseudo-standard serial numbr scheme, then it was manufactured in 97).<p>The indicator light styles are kinds I have seen around in years on military a/c. That doesn't really mean much, though. Slightly interesting, nonetheless.
Somewhat-related: a teardown of a rubidium standard probably similar to the one mentioned in the article: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymV9LwhD0W0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymV9LwhD0W0</a>
It's not actually an atomic clock, it is an atomic frequency standard. The difference between the two is that an atomic clock outputs 'time' whereas an atomic frequency standard merely outputs a very regular square wave.<p>You can easily build an atomic clock once you have such a frequency standard. The confusion probably stems from the electronics term 'clock' for square wave used to clock other digital circuitry but the general public would definitely misinterpret the term atomic clock to mean something different.<p>That said, very nice find and very nice hack!