Topic: FM Radio program - setting preset name to number of station?

Now that things settled down a bit, is it possible to make the fm radio program have:

1) Have 6 presets
2) When you make a preset, change the button text to the station NUMBER?

Re: FM Radio program - setting preset name to number of station?

1) I'll see if there's enough room for six - probably is...

2) Please clarify - on mine, the button does change to the station number/frequency when set.

Like many things, the radio UI was designed by several people, somewhat based on the behavior of a car radio.

3 (edited by philhu 2015-03-18 05:34:36)

Re: FM Radio program - setting preset name to number of station?

I will check again, but i set a preset last night and the button stayed 'Preset 1'.

I will verify tonight!  This is on a Insignia 3.5".   I did not check on my chumby one, which is still in the box.


I noticed last night that you are reading some part of the RDS signal, as the station NAME showed up on the display, like  'WBZ 98.5'

Kind of COOL!

Re: FM Radio program - setting preset name to number of station?

When I set preset on my mine it turns to the Mhz corresponding to station. (such as 88.1 fm). It would be nice to have a few more presets if possible. Sometimes when I first find a station it seems to show the wrong info and then changes. It is like there is a memory of former stations associated with the frequency from another place. Wish it could do HD radio subchannels. That would be great! I suppose it would need a hardware upgrade to do that.

Owner of 3 Sony Dash, 2 Info 8.

Re: FM Radio program - setting preset name to number of station?

yes, mine saves the freq on the preset too.  Don't know how I missed that

Yes, HD Radio would be cool, but requires a different tuner

Re: FM Radio program - setting preset name to number of station?

There was a discussion about HD Radio back when the C1 was introduced.  At the time, iBiquity charged a $50 per unit license fee just for the hardware.  While it's apparently lower now, it would still end up being the most expensive component in the system.

Back then someone bet me on the forum that HD radio would completely supplant FM radio within a few years.  I guess I won that bet.

Re: FM Radio program - setting preset name to number of station?

$50 per unit license fee? I always wondered why HD radio never took off. I have an idea why now.

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Re: FM Radio program - setting preset name to number of station?

I have had a couple of the early Sony desktop HD radios (no longer made)... I mainly got it for secondary channels.  The sound was a little better, but those early units needed so much processing power that they had giant power bricks and cooling fans. I expect a few generations of DSP die shrinks have made it much easier to handle.

Re: FM Radio program - setting preset name to number of station?

Why so much processing? CD players from the early 80's could handle high resolution D/A conversion and error correction, can't believe more current hardware needed to be that beefy. I admit I know almost nothing about the HD radio format.

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Re: FM Radio program - setting preset name to number of station?

The data format on audio CD is very simple.

HD Radio uses a proprietary codec, so didn't get the advantage of being supported by specialized hardware the way standardized codecs (like MP3 and AAC) were, both because of the low volume and the need to enter into expensive licensing arrangements to even find out how the codec worked in the first place.

In addition to the large per-unit receiver licenses, iBiquity also charged a large one-time fee and recurring payments from broadcasters (usually 3% percentage of the incremental revenue), plus the broadcaster had the cost of new equipment and conversion.

11 (edited by philhu 2015-03-19 11:15:22)

Re: FM Radio program - setting preset name to number of station?

Brings back memories.  I worked with Phillips and Sony and a Sony 101 development CD reader  (It read and lit up little lights during the read/error phases of reads).  It was used as one of the first products using a CD reader in the middle 1980s, for a company called Optical Media International and a disk containing banks of instruments to load into a keyboard.

I remember the first CD write, by sending 8 magnetic tapes (6250 bpi) to 3M and paying a couple thousand and waiting 4 weeks.  Then buying our first writer at $50K 2 years later