This is a part 4 (out of 4) in my WWVB time signal series (part 3).
While I had a tremendous amount of fun making PIC-based WWVB receiver and both hardware and software worked, it wasn't a full success. Frankly, I would recommend anyone wanting time synchronization functionality to use a Raspberry Pi based version (also available for purchase). Reason is one and one only - operating frequency.
With Raspberry Pi working at 1 GHz+ it's really easy to generate precise 60 kHz carrier wave and keep the timing straight. Microchip PIC16F1454 working at 48 MHz should be capable of giving a nice clean 60 KHz waveform too. In practice, it doesn't. In order to allow the internal clock (a minor miracle, if you ask me) to work with USB, PIC will keep doing minor adjustments with every received packet. It will be awesome for USB but any external element will see this as a slight drift.
My Casio watch takes its time to synchronize to WWVB signal and, until done, it keeps comparing it to its internal quartz. And it has a damn good quartz so these micro-adjustment PIC makes really mess with it. Nine times our of ten, it would just abort synchronization since it thought signal was unreliable. In short, it was a pain in the butt.
And yes, it was possible to synchronize some clocks regardless of these imprecisions. Most clock actually do a much shorter synchronization cycle and without much verification. But the one I wanted to play with was being a smart alec. And in general, I actually found watches to be more picky than clocks - go figure.
Having an external crystal for microcontroller would help with stability. But it would need to be a full 48 kHz one. Guess what - the maximum supported frequency for external clock is 20 MHz. So, if we go with 16 MHz and 3x PLL, we're in a slightly less leaky boat but still not out of woods (I just love mixed metaphors.)
Combine that with a general simplicity Raspberry Pi solution provides and the whole microcontroller-based solution was doomed to be inferior. But there are worse ways to spend a few weekends. :)