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Feature Request for FM Transmitter Usage


bhays

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Steven, You are right about dynamic PS is not really working in car radio's.

Neither the Noname DVD/CD/Radio i have in m car or the Sony in my wife's car shows dynamic PS. Just the Default PS. But both RDS reciveres in my house shows a nice scrolling message.

I did test Minirds with a .txt file and two seconds after i manually edit the file, the scrolling text changes.

But i found out that searching for my transmitter on a car radio is much better now.
without RDS the car radio often skipped because it had no RDS and TA. Now when i search, it finds the transmitter right away and holds it.

So, if only LOR2 could put the filename of the playing MP3 in a .txt file, then Minirds could show the filename as dynamic PS and/or Radiotext

Here is a pic of my (almost finished) transmitter with the Minirds in a homemade case.

FMtransmitter.jpg

/Kim

PS: I need to find a way to lower the power from the transmitter. I took a drive today and found out that the range is around 3 Km / 2 miles!!

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Maybe I am missing it.

Can a Ramsey Transmitter be modified to support the RDS?

I have been thinking of upgrading from the FM25 to the FM100 this year. But, I sure would really to add RDS.

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Maybe Dan can let us know how the RDS support will work. If LOR will drop a text file, then we can all go ahead and make plans and purchase the RDS encoders we need.

Come on, Dan, what's the scoop?

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Ed.Faranda wrote:

Can a Ramsey Transmitter be modified to support the RDS?

Yes. Read my post about how I (on my second try) got the Pira32 RDS ecoder connected to the Ramsey FM25B. Assuming support is added to LOR, I plan to use this in my show this year.
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I have seen an unofficial mod for the EDM LED to add RDS. It is posted in the EDM yahoo group files section.

They have told me that it would be possible to also adapt the EDM LCD
to also accept RDS ... but have not provided a schematic for it yet.

EDM did tell me that this modification does invalidate the warranty.

They were working on a new chip for the nextgen LCD which could
have RDS encoding built in (on the chip). Thats probably a year off.

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If LOR/S2 adds RDS support it would be very powerful. But they would likely be ahead of the transmitters most commonly used. Right now, you kind of have to modify the transmitter to achieve this. I would think as they come out with VCO chips with RDS integrated in it ... then RDS will become more mainstream and viable.

It seems that S2 needs to allow you to specify a file and perhaps a couple common formats (for RDS encoders). If it could allow you to specify your own format, that would be very cool. I'm thinking how the mp3 encoders allow you to specify the file name using portions of the ID3 tags to create the file names, etc.

Has anyone used one of those scrolling LED signs to communicate with the viewers? It would be neat if you could use S2 to write song information to a text file and then have that file read by a scrolling sign to communicate the song information that way and also to provide courtesy announcements between sequences, etc.

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Those are awesome additional ideas for a text file.

What I think would be really useful is a token based super simple scripting language. Basically there would be a txt entry box where you could put in what you wanted the text file to include and insert tokens which LOR would convert to values..

eg:
$ = currently playing song name
# = time left in song
! = whatever

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I agree 100%, the more I think about it ... the generic text file option is more powerful than RDS support alone (way more) ... and would probably work for feeding a text file based RDS encoder as well.

A list of a few tokens that could be send on some frequency to a text file would be very powerful.

I kind of like the format where each item is a variable like mp3 ID3 tags in CDex ...

something like:

$1 = current song name ... Your a Mean One Mr Grinch

$2 = show name ... i.e. Grizwalds Christmas

$3 = theme name ... The Grinch Show

$4 = song duration MM:SS

$5 = sequence # in playlist .... i.e. 8 [ playing song 8 of 10 ]

$6 = total sequences in scheduler list ... i.e. 10

$7 = artist [ if entered for sequence ]

$8 = comment1 ... i.e. look at the roof for a surprise

$9 = comment2 ... i.e. please turn your lights off

Then there could be general options like:

Filename = [ browse ]

Update for this sequence [ Yes ] [ No ]

. . . Update Options [beginning of song] [Middle of song] [after [10] seconds]

[clear and rewrite file each sequence] [append to file]

Ftp server = [ ]

User = [ ]

Pass = [ ]

Directory = [ ]

I don't know ... just brainstorming a bit ...

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So last year being my first year, I built a FM10. It was aweful. One moment it would be great the next it wouldnt. So my plan this year is to upgrade, but I love the idea of RDS. After going through this posting I'm totally confused, but it seems we're waiting on what method LOR will post the text? I don't want to get a new transmitter to find out later I'm out of luck.

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Dan Maslyk wrote:

but it seems we're waiting on what method LOR will post the text? I don't want to get a new transmitter to find out later I'm out of luck.

The only questions are if and when and from what source will LOR post the text. If and when it happens, it will almost certainly be by putting the text in a file. All RDS computer interface programs know how to poll a file for changes and read the text from the file.

So your only question is if, not which.

As I have found with my Ramsey FM25B, which uses the same main chip as the EDM transmitter, almost any transmitter will work with a RDS encoder like the Pira32, if you don't mind invalidating the warranty.
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  • 6 months later...

Hey Everyone,

Well I thought I would give the Oldie a bump because I never did see what LOR S2 was going to support and I am thinking about doing some RDS this year.

So it's been 6 months now and just wonder if their have been any major improvements in RDS with the miniRDS or Aironet products.

Thanks again,
Ted

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  • 3 years later...

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