FM Transmitters

[dfuller]

Thought this might be useful down the road.

I had put together another company's transmitter from a kit last year. It worked OK not great had complaints about static and had very little coverage.

So I went ahead and looked at all the forums, websites and Ebay and found a Eclipse 4000 made by mobile black box.... $129.00 made in USA shipped out and got it Monday easy to plug in direct from my laptop and it's range is about 1/4 mile and I live in a track development close to hills..... It is crystal clear here. Just using the 30" steel antenna


Happy Lighting:D

and a Very Safe and Happy Holiday Season

32 channels LOR (21000 lights)and growing

Dennis

Pacifica, CA

[iresq]

Thanks for the post. So far I have not read a bad review of MBB.

[radioguy1007]

Be careful not to buy the V6000 model - it is mono.

[KenL_MCSE]

I too bought the Eclipse 4000; it easily broadcasts in stereo 1/4 mile - I could actually get it about 1/2 mile away but sounding good at 1/4 mile



GREAT UNIT!

[John Hertig]

Good to hear that it is working well for you. Just be aware that it is hard wired to put out 1/2 watt = 500mw, which is a bit much for an unlicensed 'Low Power FM' station. As long as noone complains, you should be ok, but if they do, the odds that you are found to be violating FCC regulations is very high and it probably will be very difficult to bring that unit into compliance.

[Richard Hamilton]

What I would like to find is a decent transmitter with RDS already built in. I have a couple of clients who want displays for 2009 with RDS transmitters. I just don't have the time or interest to modify transmitters, and since it is for a third party, I'd prefer they come that way from the manufacturer.

Yes, I know about PCS Electronics. By the time you get RDS into one of their transmitters, you end up with $700 or more in cost. That sounds pretty ridiculous for a small amount of inexpensive electronics.

[garyfunk]

EDM is planning one for this year.

[Richard Hamilton]

garyfunk wrote:

EDM is planning one for this year.

That would be nice. Is this the company with the crappy looking web site (black on green text that I can't even read)? If so, I hope their electronics design is much better than the site.

[John Hertig]

I don't recall having a problem with their web site, but in any case, they put their effort into fine low cost, low power FM transmitters. A bunch of people from this forum and Planet Christmas have gotten units via the group buys, and as far as I can tell, almost everyone is entirely satisfied.

[garyfunk]

Yes, the website is pretty ugly. The radio is greatly beautiful. I will buy the new one when it comes out.

[Richard Hamilton]

garyfunk wrote:

Yes, the website is pretty ugly. The radio is greatly beautiful. I will buy the new one when it comes out.

Ah, then I got to the right web site. Gary, I think they could use your services
They are breaking all of the standard rules of web site design. The most important one being that one should never use red and blue together as color blind people (at least 6% of male population, and me being one of them) can't read most of the text on the site.

I have heard that the transmitters are good, but if I can't read the site, I'd never know what I am buyer. Hopefully they will fix that. I think I'd like to buy a couple of their RDS transmitters if they come out with one soon enougj. Thanks for the post.

[garyfunk]

I'll be first in line to buy the new RDS enabled transmiter and then keep the old one as a spare.

[RaceMedic]

If I have the Mobile Black Box Eclipse 4000 ... IS there a way to use RDS with it !?

I have NO CLUE on where to start with RDS but am interested to see if it is feasible !

Thanks,

Dave

[Richard Hamilton]

RaceMedic wrote:

If I have the Mobile Black Box Eclipse 4000 ... IS there a way to use RDS with it !?

I have NO CLUE on where to start with RDS but am interested to see if it is feasible !

Thanks,

Dave

Any update on your interest in RDS since posting this?

And if no one has mentioned it, I don't think the 4000 model supports RDS unless they have upgraded the design lately.

[KenL_MCSE]

there is not a native way of adding RDS to MBB. I contacted them and they pointed me to a company in England that has an RDS unit that goes between the antenna jack and the antenna. http://www.pira.cz/rds/ the same people that make the software. at $144 dollars. Another reason I bought the EDM

[Richard Hamilton]

Thanks for confirming. That is what I thought as well. As far as I know, MBB does not have any RDS capable transmitters. And like you said, it is also one of many reasons I bought the EDM as well. I use the EDM with "MiniRDS" software to read text generated from LOR and push it down to the transmitter.

[james morris]

i have black box 5000 use it everday all summer long no problem at all love it

[jstorms]

I would love to add a RDS feature to my show. I didn't know that I could buy a unit to put inline with my existing radio. Be able to provide the web address, current song, maybe a few things like don't turnaround in driveways

[Richard Hamilton]

jstorms wrote:

I would love to add a RDS feature to my show. I didn't know that I could buy a unit to put inline with my existing radio. Be able to provide the web address, current song, maybe a few things like don't turnaround in driveways

Well actually it is not that easy... depending on what you mean by "put inline".

Generally speaking, your transmitter needs to support RDS capability and usually that means you communicate the RDS text via a serial or USB connection from the computer.

I've seen (and played with some) solutions that are both software and transmitter mods in order to get RDS, but I was underpressed with the results. That why I bought a transmitter that supports RDS directly.

To be more specific about the approach I use (there are many solutions), I run "MiniRDS" (free software) that pushes text to my EDM transmitter via a serial port on my show computer that is connected to the serial port on the transmitter. The text going out is sent by MiniRDS.

There is a feature in MiniRDS that polls a text file to watch for changes in the file. When it sees a change, it reads the text from the file and sends it to the transmitter. Thus, when LOR starts to play a different song, LOR updates that text file with the song information. The result is that when each song starts, the title, etc, is pushed to the text file and then out to the transmitter. Between shows, MiniRDS pushes out other text like show times, web site URL etc.

As I said, there are many solutions. Mine is simply one way to do it that I have experimented to find being simple and reliable. Simply said. I don't know of any device that you can put inline to do RDS, yet honestly I have not looked at that in the last couple of years so there may be something that someone else can tell us about.