• From: Australia
  • Registered: 2009-03-19
  • Posts: 505

Topic: Looks nice

The new interface for the FM radio is a big improvement. It looks nice -  much more finished than the old version. Having presets is a great idea.
I also like the look of the new My Music Files. Since this one shows the file names of mp3s saved into the Chumby One's memory (as opposed to the old one, that just showed it as Music on USB even though it actually wasn't on a USB) does that mean that you could select one particular file (out of several) for an alarm?
It will also be interesting to see if this fixes my problem with the alarm mp3 working for several days and then stuttering on alarm playback but not normal playback.
The Skip alarm feature is another fine thing.

  • Registered: 2010-01-10
  • Posts: 26

Re: Looks nice

The new interface for the FM radio is a big improvement. It looks nice -  much more finished than the old version. Having presets is a great idea.

Yes thats right, it looks real nice (And using the radios station name instead of the stations frequency would be an even greater idea)

3 Reply by francesco (edited by francesco 2010-11-08 11:40:37)

  • Registered: 2010-05-17
  • Posts: 34

Re: Looks nice

The radio has quite a strong background noise which prevents me from hearing some stations: it's actually worse than the current version. I'm living in Switzerland, mostly listening to italian radios.

  • Duane
  • Duane
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  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,209

Re: Looks nice

There was no change to the firmware associated with the radio in this Control Panel-only release, only the UI, so I can't think of any way that "background noise" would be any different.

Duane's Website

  • igor
  • New member
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  • Registered: 2010-11-09
  • Posts: 1

Re: Looks nice

The radio works now in germany with 0.1 MHz steps.

The "background noise" is a different problem, that every device with fast a microprocessor
and radio has.
The digital electronic disturbs the radio reception.
Other manufacturers solve this problem by varying the PLL clock a little bit, depending on
the actual receiving frequency of the radio.
This has in most cases to be tried out, and the results be placed in a table, that the radio
application uses to minimize the noise.

It's obvious that the Chumby developers are either not aware of this common trick,
or just didn't have the time to implement it.

Coming to the radio applet:
It has a bug in the presets.
When you choose one preset (let's say #1), tune to a another frequency, and then
press another preset button (i.e. #2) for a long time, then the actual frequency is stored
in #2, but also the value of #1 changes.

Nevertheless, at least a radio that works in europe, after nearly a year.
(I thought about cutting off the antenna several times, because it sucks, and the radio was not
working anyway.)
Reception quality is a different point.

6 Reply by samuel337 (edited by samuel337 2010-11-24 00:45:28)

  • Registered: 2008-05-29
  • Posts: 105

Re: Looks nice

With the change to the My Music Files UI, it breaks all previously set alarms that have a music source set to 'My Music Files'.

There needs to be some kind of backwards compatibility code, or on release, a warning in the release notes at least so users know. My alarms haven't been working the last few days - just got the alarm screen, but no sound.

Also a little disappointed that you can't play all tracks in a certain directory; going to see if it picks up playlists. I like the ability to skip alarms though, nice addition.

EDIT: nope, no playlist support (.m3u).  Can't seem to be able to make it play more than one song for alarms (it did before). Feature request please? smile

  • From: Australia
  • Registered: 2009-03-19
  • Posts: 505

Re: Looks nice

samuel337 wrote:

With the change to the My Music Files UI, it breaks all previously set alarms that have a music source set to 'My Music Files'.

There needs to be some kind of backwards compatibility code, or on release, a warning in the release notes at least so users know. My alarms haven't been working the last few days - just got the alarm screen, but no sound.

Yes, this was a bit of a surprise and a little disappointing.
I am just glad that for the last few weeks when I had to get up really early I was using an old alarm that played one of the preset sounds.
I only discovered this problem yesterday when I switched back to the later alarm that plays My Music Files - the alarm screen comes up, but no sound plays. It seems easily fixed - it worked this morning after I edited the alarm to play the specific file name, but knowing about it in advance wouldn't have been a bad thing.

  • Duane
  • Duane
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  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
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Re: Looks nice

igor wrote:

Coming to the radio applet:
It has a bug in the presets.
When you choose one preset (let's say #1), tune to a another frequency, and then
press another preset button (i.e. #2) for a long time, then the actual frequency is stored
in #2, but also the value of #1 changes.

I cannot reproduce this behavior  - can anyone reproduce this?

Duane's Website

  • From: Australia
  • Registered: 2009-03-19
  • Posts: 505

Re: Looks nice

Yes, I've had a go at it and got some odd results.
I tried tuning preset 4 to 92.9 and preset 1 also changed itself to 92.9 as I held the preset 4 button.
Also, when I tried to tune preset 3 to 107.3, preset 1 changed itself from 102.5 to 103.3.

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
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  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,209

Re: Looks nice

Wow, OK, I'll keep trying to make this happen.

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