FM Tuner using a RO machine?

I’ve been working on various aspects of VHF/FM Stereo Radio and this has lead to me wondering about a possibility… :-)

It might be possible to use a small machine running RO combined with a digital radio ‘dongle’ as either a superb Stereo Tuner or for other ‘radio’ purposes over a wide range of frequency bands! If interested, you can see the “background” to this here:

https://www.audiomisc.co.uk/FunWithFM/FunWithFM.html

To tune/adjust the device I use a “QTHID” prog on Linux at present. Which makes me wonder if an equivalent HID could be generated to do this with a RO machine. If so, it could become very handy as a very flexible receiver.

We have another problem here in Germany. Some regions of Germany are planning to stop FM/VHF radio and to replace it by DAB+ entirely.

Even it is not a very urgent problem I evaluated the possibilities as I am owning only VHF/FM stereo radios.

One variant I found quite interesting. There are two USB DAB+ receiver sticks. One cheap one from China (seems to be not available in the moment here in Germany) and a (for me too) expensive solution which still seems to be available (and also some sticks for HiFi devices but this may be manufacturer specific). I found the concept of both sticks amazing:

The sticks are pretending to be an USB storage device. There is only one directory which contains files. One file for every broadcast station the stick is able to receive. The files seems to be presented as MP3 files and can be played by according programs (I won’t exclude that e.g. DigitalCD may cope with them). Of course there are some technical limitations and tricks (long time to switch between stations due to fill the buffer to avoid EOF or gaps).

https://www.dension.com/product/car-handsfree-and-multimedia/dabu/

Perhaps there are similar solutions for VHF/FM too.

Regarding your dongle:

Wasn’t there an USB HID application from X-Ample? Perhaps it can interact with your device.

http://www.xat.nl/riscos/sw/usb/hid/index.htm

replace it by DAB+ entirely.

Hmm, my car radio supports DAB+ (it appears to use the existing rooftop antenna, there’s a splitter behind the box so the same thing plugs into the FM and DAB antenna slots) but all I ever seem to get is “No stations”.

I guess out here in cow-land, DAB just isn’t a thing?

Hi,
I have a Realtek SDR kit purchased from Elektor, I can only use it with Windows….
In French, but it’s mainly for the image.
https://www.elektormagazine.fr/news/banc-essai-kit-rtl-sdr

I was able to listen to FM, but we would have to look into DAB.

Another interest with the software is to see the spectrum’s signal….

I don’t know where the implementation of DAB is in France, but I’m not sure that we use the same frequency ranges as in Germany, above UHF and not Band III.
The FM band is very full which makes reception difficult, so DAB would increase the number of channels.

Anyway, I’m listening to France Musique on my FM tuner and it’s good.
On the other hand I don’t think there is any analogue sound for radio broadcasters anymore, digital sound sources and mixing desks too….

On the other hand Thomas and Rick I am interested in an example of programming using HID (Xat).
Thanks

On the other hand Thomas and Rick I am interested in an example of programming using HID (Xat).

Is that likely to be relevant? XAT’s HID is an application to configure and interact with Human Interface Devices (HID). However, HID in the USB sense is wider definition of a protocol which is used to transfer data to and from devices – often, but not always, HID devices.

For example, it’s common for the small USB-attached boxes that electronic component manufacturers supply to allow engineers to send data to and from their development boards to be “HID” in the sense that they talk over the USB HID protocol (and not that they interface with humans). The USB HID protocol is simple for small-scale data transfer, and has much better OS-level support on Windows (it’s basically plug-and-play).

I think Dave Higton has done a lot of work interacting with HID-type devices in BASIC, so it might be worth looking at what is on his website for inspiration.

In French, but it’s mainly for the image.
https://www.elektormagazine.fr/news/banc-essai-kit-rtl-sdr

Or in English:
https://www.elektormagazine.com/review/rtl-sdr-kit

Elektor mag being the people they are, there’s more stuff:
https://www.elektormagazine.com/tags/rtl-sdr

The python script set of downloads in the Zip: Software_Raspberry Pi 5 for Radio Amateurs might be useful to people experimenting

Christmas is coming…

As an aside, the search feature on the page saying “search in 40 years of content” made me think.
I was sure I’d been reading Elektor before 1984 and a quick check shows the first issue is back in 1961

It’s about time there was SDR support in RISC OS. <draws Venn diagram of two very small circles only just intersecting>

Thanks for these answers,
For HID I wanted to talk about the USBHID module which has a lot of commands and swi, well documented., But I’m looking for an example of use like with eXML.
I’m going to go visit Dave’s site.

Software for SDR downloaded….