please make aplugin for Silabs FM RDS USB Radio

AndreD · January 19th, 2007, 12:32 PM

This is a USB radio, with input for external antenna, and it provies the sound over USB (no cables to pick up noise/no cable spaghetti)

please check out this product...
http://www.silabs.com/tgwWebApp/publ...USBFMRadio.htm

please observe links to AN264 and AN264SW
in the world of electronics, AN means Application Note, and the AN264SW contains all software source, and I guess it's more or less all you would need ?

then this link :
http://www.alibri.it/RRMobile/Silab%20USB%20Radio.htm

it proves that the chip's (Si4701) hardware RDS decoder works fine. - AND provide some software.

could somebody please make a plugin for this device?
it would be the best FM radio tuner for car-computers because it is not a part of a bulky TV card, and because it sends audio digitally, rather than messing with cables/noise like HQCT.

and the best of all ? - price - at $35 it's about 1/3 of the price of HQCT or Cinergy TV tuner with RDS.

liquefact · January 20th, 2007, 03:54 AM

I absolutely agree. The price/performance is at the top amongst all radio cards that can be used with CF. It's small, cheap, has RDS. It works with Radiator with a plugin but with a little problem, does echo. When i hit the pause button, the echo diminishes. And to be able to display RDS, i think a seperate plugin has to be written down.

FMode · January 20th, 2007, 10:29 AM

say thanks to the guys which embedded their ADS driver into another frontend instead of seperating into a driver ! (this doesn't mean any extra work!!!)
(used office with a printer ever before ??? Does Microsoft control printers directly ? I think you get it...)

I did a proposal for a common interface which with no reply...

I have an ADS but currently I don't have time for it - and yes I wrote the HQCT driver which currently powers CF...
(and sorry I don't have an 48h day)

David · January 20th, 2007, 01:48 PM

That's a shame if they would have made it a standard driver it would have taken just a few hours to build a CF Radio Module...

I will see if I can find some people to do some work on this as well...

FMode good work on everything and thanks for all your help... Hopefully we can get the HQCT issues resolved and finished...

david

liquefact · January 21st, 2007, 10:52 AM

FMode,

i totally understand the essence of your work with HQCT. I was thinking this for some time, as why people were trying to write seperate interfaces for each card as there is a directshow interface Microsoft has. By using AMCAP, you can easily use any radio card that have a WDM driver. But does this rule applies radios that are HID compliant, i don't know. I'm a programmer but don't have enough knowledge with C#. If you or David can help me to make a quickstart to write an interface for Silabs using FMRadioHAL, i'll try to make my time.

I can use Silabs with Radiator right now, but with echoes. To silence the second instance of the same channel, i'm pressing the pause button every time i change a channel.

And i'm bored of it. This is the motivation behind the native Silabs driver i'm planning to write with the help of you. And for the first phase i only plan to make the radio work, RDS is later.

FMode · January 21st, 2007, 05:34 PM

The Microsoft BDA stuff doesn't support RDS (so its the same as radiator).

FMRadioHAL is in .NET (so you can use all .NET dialects)... So choose one which fits your knowledge best... (consider this too: http://www.alibri.it/RRMobile/Silab%20USB%20Radio.htm)

There is no need for RDS.... The RDS Interpreter is a seperate component (for all radios - to be detailed: FMRadioHAL is collection of components) just output the 8 raw Bytes and finished...

pm me your email addr...

BTW: Silabs = ADS Radio (both using Si4701)

good night
*tired*

liquefact · January 23rd, 2007, 04:41 AM

I'll try as i can free my time. And i think it's better to use a native driver and not use radiator. But in the meanwhile i think it will be quicker to correct the bug (or something i don't know) which creates echo when using Silabs with radiator in CF. Otherwise it works and works really good. I've posted in another forum, you hear an echo of the sound coming 1-2 secs behind, and the only way to diminish this echo is to hit pause button. So the sound taken from Silabs is not re routed to playback channels, but the direct stream is not touched. Result -> 1 instance of sound. There must be a quick solution to this. David, actually i'm waiting a response from you, what should be done?

David · January 23rd, 2007, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by liquefact

I'll try as i can free my time. And i think it's better to use a native driver and not use radiator. But in the meanwhile i think it will be quicker to correct the bug (or something i don't know) which creates echo when using Silabs with radiator in CF. Otherwise it works and works really good. I've posted in another forum, you hear an echo of the sound coming 1-2 secs behind, and the only way to diminish this echo is to hit pause button. So the sound taken from Silabs is not re routed to playback channels, but the direct stream is not touched. Result -> 1 instance of sound. There must be a quick solution to this. David, actually i'm waiting a response from you, what should be done?

You know in your windows mixer that if you have your radio plugged into the line-in the line-in under the playback section has to be muted, make sure it's muted... That is not how sound is played in Centrafuse...

I playback through a buffer... All you have to do is go mute it in the mixer... It should be done for you automatically, but on some sound cards it can't mute it...

Just mute your playback input in the windows mixer and you should be done...

david

liquefact · January 24th, 2007, 01:57 AM

I'll check it out but i'm fairly sure that i tried all possibilities. The Silabs don't output the sound by any cable but using the USB. So i thought that it must be creating a virtual output channel. But there is only recording channel listed on the audio properties page of windows related with the audio device created by silabs. So i could not mute anything. May be it can be done using any new drivers. But i'll check.

David · January 24th, 2007, 11:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by liquefact

I'll check it out but i'm fairly sure that i tried all possibilities. The Silabs don't output the sound by any cable but using the USB. So i thought that it must be creating a virtual output channel. But there is only recording channel listed on the audio properties page of windows related with the audio device created by silabs. So i could not mute anything. May be it can be done using any new drivers. But i'll check.

so where does the audio come from if you are not using USB? It just plays back in windows through it's own soundcard? It has to create a USB sound output device of some kind and that is what you need to mute...

david