Fwd: Time and GPS's

From Dave Howell, Nellie D 37VT63

  Technology is advancing so quickly.  This point was driven home recently as I searched for a way to keep Nellie's Slurpee from running at night.  Its noisy pump, mounted under Nellie's stateroom floor, can wake the dead.  Since microcontrollers don't typically have built-in clocks, the search was on for one that I could add.  Allow me to digress for a minute.  When Bicki and I set sail for Mexico in 1995 it was at a seminal moment in history.  Since the 1600's sailors went to sea with sextants.  We had one too.  But we also had a new fangled, handheld device called a GPS.  For the princely sum of $800 it could tell you instantly and continuously your lat/long.  An added benefit was that it could tell UTC time with the accuracy of an atomic clock.  And this brings us back to the Slurpee and the solution to its real-time clock problem.  Since 1995 GPS prices have halved and halved again.  Until today when this GPS can be purchased for $3.32.

That's right, GPS's are so inexpensive now you can buy them as substitutes for cheap clocks.