FM Radio with RDS/TMC

Scouse Monkey · 12-02-2004, 06:40 AM

Not really homebrew but would need some development (although mainly software) as it is not a commercial product. This is, as the title says, an FM reciever which can handle RDS, TMC and TA data and the software can currently display or export the data. I found some data on a module from GNS which i put in the GPS section but no one seemed interested http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/gps/37499-gps-rds-tmc.html

but i then did some more snooping and found a complete test module here http://www.irt.de/IRT/produkte/IRT_R...t_Module_e.pdf
This is not commercially available but would be perfect for us to develop as most of the hard work is done and it would probably just need some software/driver work and possibly a bit of hardware stuff - working on amplifier for the antenna, shielding etc. Anyone fancy following this up with me? I don't have any software experience but i can build circuits and test stuff.

Andy

HoSS · 12-02-2004, 06:49 AM

Yeah, If i can find some free time I'd be happy to collaborate.
Although my expertise is electronics & embeded code (uP's)
I don't have much windows programming experience.

I'm using MediaCar at the moment, it would be damn nice to integrate this into that, but i'm not sure thats possible

HoSS

Scouse Monkey · 12-02-2004, 06:53 AM

Cool, i am trying to get some more info out of the companies at the moment.

Where are you from HoSS?

Anyone else interested or got any opinions on this thing?

SWC · 12-02-2004, 10:18 AM

The only downside is it is serial. With all the homebrew devices cropping up around here were going to need 100 serial ports by the time its all done.

Scouse Monkey · 12-02-2004, 10:35 AM

nice constructive comment! I try and find a way to add FM with RDS a new feature (TMC) and thats all you can say! !his can easily be worked around using a serial -> USB adapter and i currently dont have anything else using my serial port on my car setup.

GPS: USB,
DVD & ext. HDD: Firewire,
extra buttons: USB gamepad,

the only serial device i do have is a homemade IR receiver and i have no plans to put one in my car as i will never use it - thats what i got a touch screen and my steering wheel controls for.

Maximus · 12-03-2004, 09:43 AM

No offense, but reading the GPS thread I thought to myself "what the h-ll is he on about" and now after this thread I can't say that things cleared up much.

TMC isn't a very new feature, it's been running over here since 1998.
Take a look at the pdf-file for more information about TMC and what the data actually means.

TMC are sent over a specific frequency/radio channel so if you wish to listen to the radio as well (and not listen to the same boring station all the time) you'll need two FM receivers or a GPS receiver with built in TMC support.

Personally I feel that a third party app. (similar to the one in your links) that only displays the TMC info is more or less useless on the road.
Destinator have built in TMC support which would be much more useful.

One thing that I myslef is interested in, and plan on trying, is to have a plain GPS receiver and a FM receiver with RDS support and then combine the information into a GPS/TMC compatible format through a virtual com-port which then could be read by any navigation software with TMC support.

Just my $0.02

/M

Scouse Monkey · 12-03-2004, 10:11 AM

no, my plan is to have the TMC data feed to destinator to enable dynamic rerouting. The problem is that there are no RDS radios out there at the moment (except PCI) and the d-link is a bit **** and still needs to be modded to get RDS and then feed the data in through a serial port. Was just wanting to see if this was going to be a viable way of killing two birds with one stone - i.e. getting okay FM and the TMC stuff. Other option int he gps/tmc mouse that will do it all but this is more expensive than a normal mouse and i still have to sort some FM with RDS as i like having the name of the station show up. I think cssnet is planning on showing the TMC data too - that way you can at least see why you are sitting in a traffic jam if you do get caught!

Maximus · 12-04-2004, 04:23 AM

Well, the biggest problem using a standard FM receiver (that supports RDS) for TMC is that it has to be locked on to the same radio station (or Frequency) all the time since the TMC information isn't standard in all RDS data streams.

So, in reality you need two FM receivers, one for radio and one for TMC.

I allready got the Terratec 600 card and was planning to use that and the USB receiver that Seth and Rando is working on.
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/hardware-development/32490-hu-quality-am-fm-rds-rbds-radio-features.html
Which one that will be used as what, will be determined when I have a chance of comparing reception/audio quality.

Now, once you have your GPS and FM/TMC receivers, you still need a way of combining the output from those into a single com-port since, at least, Destinator doens't have one port for GPS and one for TMC.
In a perfect world, Ninja Monkey would include that support in his frontend, but I really do expect him to have way to much work allready so perhaps it's a feature that could be included later on once a stand-alone program has been written and proven fully functional and bug-free.

Unfortunatley the Destinator frontend doens't support TMC at this moment and it is not all that clear (for me at least) if it ever will.
If not, the only solution would then be to write a program that generates custom POI's for destinator, but I'm not sure if Destinator updates those dynamically or if it only does that everytime you restart the program, in which case that feature would be more of a gimmick and not very usable in traffic.

/M

Scouse Monkey · 12-04-2004, 05:43 AM

Cheers for the info Maximus, at the moment this kind of input is just what i (and everyone else needs) as I am just trying to weigh up what is needed etc. I don't even have my screen yet so implementing TMC is a long way off but it is good to keep things in the pipeline. As for the combining com ports thingy, maybe the combined GPS-TMC mouse would be the best idea afterall. the specs on it seem pretty good. Then i can palyw ith different radio solutions (i will miss radio 2 - god i am getting old!)