Thread: For Guino: USB Radio FM with RDS from Silabs

If it has any sort of SDK/API, then I'd be glad to add support for it. The question is: did you find it for sale anywhere, cause it wasn't available at any of the distributors listed on their site. If we can buy one and we can get some sort of documentation, please let me know.

what about documentation ?

what guino is saying. if you would like to purchase one, he needs documentation or the SDK(software development kit) so he can RR control the unit. I also beleive guino stil uses a HU for fm, but im sure that if you buy one and want to send it to him instead of the software alone, he'll send it back when hes done. lol

the only other thing i question is how good the reception would be while moving. the HQCT utilizes the cars antenna system to amplify the signal recieved. looking at that unit im not seeing how much of a db gain there could possibly be. buy one and let us know :P

Silab has some technical documentation regarding the specific USB radio implementation.
According to the specs it use only standard USB audio & HID interfaces.
...
USB Profile—This device presents four different interfaces to the host when it enumerates. Three of these are active at any given time. The audio control interface is used by the host to control different parts of the audio
functions. There is also a zero-bandwidth streaming interface and a full-bandwidth streaming interface. Only one of these interfaces is used at a time. Finally, there is a Human Interface Device (HID) interface used for all other required device communication, such as controlling the Si4701 and upgrading the C8051F321 flash image.

I attached the found document (divided in two becouse of the 200Kb limit!)

Guino I'm planning also to buy it and to make a RoadRunner plugin unless you or others does not want to do the task.

This seems pretty decent.. wonder if they provide the source code for that app. -- that way we could just integrate it like we did for the other applications (make it run hidden, accept commands from RR and send statuses to RR). If you want to do the work, be my guest.. do it however you feel it's best.

Originally Posted by guino

This seems pretty decent.. wonder if they provide the source code for that app. -- that way we could just integrate it like we did for the other applications (make it run hidden, accept commands from RR and send statuses to RR). If you want to do the work, be my guest.. do it however you feel it's best.

The USB radio use the C8051F32x chip to control the radio chip.
...
"The USBXpress development kit provides a complete host and device software solution for interfacing CP210x, C8051F32x and C8051F34x devices to the Universal Serial Bus (USB). No USB protocol or host device driver expertise is required"

I downloaded the toolkit and.....I found a Visual Basic 6 example code !!!! (attached)

You want more?

OK I just found that one of the worldwide resellers is in my town and has 2 available items!!!

That's awesome.. now you really have many options.. but I would get one and play with it before doing any work on it (I mean, what if the reception isn't good etc ?).. other than that, seems simple enough to integrate directly in RR or to at least use ComSend/modCom to integrate with the SDK method (as it is with the Cinergy and Blaupunkt cards).