NI PCI-1588 Windows XP Accurate Timing Device

[willyhoops]

Hi, I see this product has been discussed on this forum here before so I hope you can help me! (Maybe Tom)

I need to log socket messages to and from an electronic trading platform with microsecond accurate timestamps and would also like to be able to schedule events with 0.5ms accuracy. Getting the messages to match exactly to real time with a GPS is nice but not so vital.

Currently I log the data with a Windows System Time (normally accurate to about 10ms) and add a high performance timer tick count so I can check approximate relative timings. Just having a single accurate timestamp would be much nicer. By messing with the multimedia timers I can get sleeps accurate to 1 or 2 ms but I would also like more precision.

It looks like I could buy this NI PCI-1588 Interface https://www.ni.com/en-us/support/model.pci-1588.html and use the enclosed C DLL software NI-Sync to get all this (The C DLL should work fine with C# and C++). Can I add an external GPS for accurate timing? Could I also just use the card as is allowing it to sync with the internet?

Is there another product I should consider? I don't really need to sync multiple machines to one time source... just have very accurate times and callbacks on one machine. I also looked at a Windows RTX addon but it was much more expensive than this card.

Many Thanks

[KostasB]

Hi,

I do not think that this device would solve your problem. This device allows you to synchronise over the Ethernet but you will still be acquiring timestamps from the Windows software clock( 1kHz). Some of the

NI PXI controllers allow you to acquire timestamps at microseconds resolution when they run LabVIEW Real-time. 

I hope that helps,

KostasB

NIUK Applications Engineering 

[willyhoops]

What a strange forum. It took me fifteen minutes to find the reply button. I am have been waiting for a reply for so long but this answer looks very strange. 

Are you sure of this? Anyone else?

Whats the point in having an accurate sychronised clock card in your machine if you can't read the time from it? Are you sure I can't use the C DLL to read the time in the device? I am talking about abandoning the Windows Clock and using the clock on this board via the C DLL. I looked at your article but I am not really sure what Lab View is. I just want to use the C DLL to read the clock. I have no other hardware etc that links to this and I am not really in a lab. I am just trying to get accurate timestamps in my code. I want to use NI-Sync and I don't know about Lab View.

Message Edited by willyhoops on 05-07-2008 01:59 AM

Message Edited by willyhoops on 05-07-2008 02:01 AM