Thread: FM/DAB digital radio - THAT WORKS!!

Originally Posted by Sonicxtacy02

better than not having anything there at all. I cut the end off a 2 pin mobo power switch cable and i'm able to at least tune to stations, albeit with a bunch of static. Since the connector is SMA i'm gonna steal an antenna off my wifi stuff and try it next

It's SMB, not SMA otherwise I would have already done that.

Originally Posted by Enforcer

It's SMB, not SMA otherwise I would have already done that.

doh! Just read that lol. Oh well.. there's gotta be a way to convert SMB to BNC (i have a BNC to motorola adapter). In the mean time, i plugged the bare wires of an ancient AM loop antenna into the SMB and the radio on my laptop was clearer than the radio in my Caravan with factory HU. There's definitely potential here!

yes, a quality smb to bnc CABLE will cost > $30.00
and adaptor if u can find about $10

is this right?

http://cgi.ebay.com/07-03064-20-RG-3...item2c555c91e2

or

http://cgi.ebay.com/97104-BNC-Female...item53e197a8b1

Ok. As development of the software is taking longer than I would of liked, I am just going to fire out latest builds daily or every couple of days now.

http://www.craigbrass.net/ultimate_radio.zip contains Centrafuse and Windows Standalone plugins.

Notes
- Both require you to loop back line in audio over speaker output using Windows sound manager. XP, Vista and 7 all have options for this. We are working on loop back within the software.
- A good skin is coming soon to the standalone application.
- The Centrafuse plugin requires version 3.1 of Centrafuse.
- The Centrafuse plugin doesn't use the standard 3.1 header yet and has some other design quirks.
- You may need to go into settings and set the port up and reset the volume output from the radio to 100%.

Any comments / questions, post them here.

OK all, I have done some testing with both Radio.exe from Craig and DAB_Master (test app which the RR plugin will be built on) from Mitch.

I started with DAB_Master from Mitch as I already knew how Craig's test app worked...
- COMM port list only showed the active ports (1,3,10) so very easy to find actual port used by module
- Once selected the first time, the app automatically reselected correct COMM port on startup
- Saving and selecting Preset stations worked well in both FM and DAB+
- When selecting preset stations later the preset P number was shown in the display window with the station name (FM only and would like this for DAB+)

Then I moved onto Radio.exe from Craig...
- Port listing shows all COMM ports from 0-39 and always resets to port 0 on startup so each time actual COMM port used (10) had to be selected
- <<Skip and >>Skip buttons only went through preset stations 1 & 2 in both FM and DAB+ modes
- Could not find way to save presets though there were buttons to skip to them

Things I found with both...
- could not determine what the Shift and Menu buttons did (seemed to be nothing)
- Scan button scanned channels in the up or down frequency direction of the last manual tune
- Last mode, tuned station, station presets and volume was retained by the Venice module after powered down and disconnected from the apps as well as physically disconnected from the USB port. I found this by changing from Mitch's app to Craig's app and having the same presets and other items already set

Suggestions...
- I would like to suggest 2 scan buttons with the +Scan sending a manual TuneUP command before the Scan command and the -Scan sending a manual TuneDOWN command before sending the Scan command. This would very closely emulate existing headunits which don't do direct freqency input tuning anyway (and honestly don't see the real need for)
- As both FM and DAB+ mode cannot be used at the same time, combining the TuneUP/TuneDOWN buttons and the ScrollUP/ScrollDOWN buttons into the one pair would be nice. The mode the module is in could determine the correct commands sent from the buttons
- As mentioned to Craig earlier in the thread, a configuration item to select what is displayed on the second display line would be nice. Since the Now Playing info is always displayed and pressing the Display button cycles through options in the same defined sequence, then could a number by used for this configuration as a "display sequence ID" so that this number of "software Display button presses" occured when the station was selected or tuned ?

Thumbs up to Mitch. If the RR interface has the same functions as the test app then it will be great.

If anyone wants some video of something, let me know and I can post it for viewing.

My man Mitch showed this to me for people looking for a cheap converter cable for the antenna.

http://www.mo-co-so.com/SMB-to-Motor...-hqcti-smb.htm

i shoulda known Chris and mo-co-so would have it.

Yes. That is the cable you need but note that your aerial may or may not work with DAB. I have tried 4 cars now. 2 of them worked. 1 of them was dodgy and the other one didn't at all.

menu button, shows the menu...
I posted a link to a radio using this module, it will expain how it works, and what most of the buttons do
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/hard...ml#post1397986

shift, i havent seen it used, its a button in the list of avail buttons... so i put in there, hoping for some use for it , its hard to do two buttons at once on a mouse clicking program... but it maybe used for that... dont know unless i hacked more... but i got enough out of this tuner, so no need

the RR Module is done, and skin for carwings_dynamic_lite is done.. and available to anyone