USB FM RDS Solution with sofware

**Frankino** · 01-17-2006, 10:49 AM

any news? seems very good but a LOT of testing is required..

**dj__a** · 01-17-2006, 05:25 PM

Originally Posted by rum

Told you!

I am really curious what the price will be for you. I have to pay €50 for 1 and €30 for 5. In compare to the price the TS mentioned I find that strange...

If you order 5 or so I'm interested to get one for £30 + p&p from you, and if we are more than 5 that get together we can maybe get a better prize? Let me know what you think. /H

**12Vsystems** · 01-25-2006, 01:43 AM

Ok so this product isn't vapor ware you just can't purchase it.

I am still trying to purchase this from Avnet, no quote or lead time yet after 10 phone calls and multiple emails. My first request was on the 8th of January

**12Vsystems** · 01-28-2006, 02:13 PM

No quote as of yet but I got another call from Avnet today telling me their on it.

I am not sure what there idea of on it is, I not expecting anything soon.

**rando** · 02-21-2006, 07:46 PM

http://www.mouser.com/index.cfm?hand..._pcodeid=63402

I ordered about a month ago and received it today. Listening to it (on my desktop) right now. Still have to test in my car with/without a car antenna. Antenna impedance matching might be an issue.

Performance
Reception (in doors): Good. It's better than my A/V receiver with a similar antenna.
Seek/Scanning: Good
Sound: Good w/ some snaps pops and hiss observed (nothing really abnormal IMHO)
Sensitivity to antenna placement/movement (in doors): Comparable to A/V receiver.

Other Observations
Installation: Plug in radio, launch application. Uses MS supplied HID driver.
RDS: Confirmed reception of station call letters, artist, title, and slogans and other messages depending on channel
Design/Schematics: 100% open
Software Interface: 100% open
AM: None
Audio output: Digital direct to PC sound hardware via USB. No analog outputs provided. **underlying hardware outputs analog which is digitized on board
Audio delay: ~.25s

... to be continued

**emumanXM** · 02-21-2006, 09:49 PM

Wow, I'm amazed you can order it from mouser! I called Silabs and they gave me aggrivation. I'm in the US and I need a NDA to purchase the eval board and get the datasheet. I'm going to try to get the NDA and just play around with it myself. The evaluation board is $150 from silabs and only obtainable via the NDA.

**Darmie** · 02-23-2006, 01:47 AM

Anyone going in for a group purchase ?

**emumanXM** · 02-23-2006, 02:15 AM

I'm buying one, for $35 it's not bad. They use a good radio IC.

**rando** · 02-23-2006, 02:33 AM

My initial testing inside my truck is mixed. Using the stock aerial lead the radio was pretty much worthless. Using one of the two factory window antennas (and oem signal amp) I'm able to pull in most stations. The hiss and pops I heard in doors are still there but there doesn't seem to be any car induced noise (no engine whine or other computer related noise).

The biggest problem I noticed is flutter. I believe this is multipath at work. I had similar issues with my custom built CRAM radio. I don't think using one half of the diversity antenna system in my truck is going to work out too well. I'm going to try my stock antenna with an actual head unit radio to see if it performs similarly -- just to isolate the issue.

**rando** · 03-01-2006, 11:53 AM

Using an old HU I had lying around I was able to receive excellent reception across the band using my factory antenna. This doesn't bode well for my test results with SiLabs USB FM tuner. So far, I still haven't been able to achieve anything resembling HU performance with it.