Did anything come out of this idea?
Hi, I'm looking here and there for a good accuracy frequency meter project.
When I read the initial post I thought - hey, this guy wants the same as I do
Perhaps 12 digits is overkill, it's really hard to get a good stable reference clock with an accuracy better than 10^-12 - and for 12 digits, a reference of an order of magnitude better accuracy and stability would be needed
I would settle for 10 digits.
A good reference is a GPS-disciplined oscillator (several projects available online, and also a ready-made used Thunderbolt GPSDO is available on eBay), or a rubidium oscillator (also available used on eBay). These offer 10^-11...-12 accuracy and stability, just what's needed for a good frequency counter.
One side of things is the accuracy of MHz level measurements, and the other is tuning of quartz oscillators for real time clocks (usually 32768Hz), or 1/2Hz signals available from some RTCs.
For such low frequencies, extremely long gate times would be needed, so indeed it's much better to have a period measurement option. The 32kHz signal can be divided to 1Hz and the period measured by counting raw reference clock pulses from first rising edge to another.
I'm a poor programmer, so I won't cope with such project. How about the original poster? Anyone?
All the best
Stan