Radio Listening Software: Difference between revisions

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== Radio ==
== Radio applications ==


A number of cards have a radio receiver.
A number of v4l cards have a radio receiver/tuner.


The following applications control the tuner. Gnomeradio and kradio, the most fully featured applications, are not yet available in all distributions and need to be compiled first. Some of the older applications are mature and readily available, but no longer actively developed.
The following programs may be useful; they are all mature and actively maintained:


* [http://www.wh-hms.uni-ulm.de/~mfcn/gnomeradio gnomeradio]
* [http://www.wh-hms.uni-ulm.de/~mfcn/gnomeradio gnomeradio] -- for Gnome, capable of recording
* [http://kradio.sourceforge.net/ kradio] for KDE
* [http://kradio.sourceforge.net/ kradio] for KDE
* [http://silicone.free.fr/xmms-FMRadio/ xmms-fmradio] -- plugin for [http://www.xmms.org/ XMMS], last version autumn 2004, Debian and Red Hat packages
* [http://www.stanford.edu/~blp/fmtools/ fmtools] for the command-line
* [http://gkrellm.luon.net/gkrellm-radio.phtml gkrellm-radio] -- minimalistic [http://gkrellm.net gkrellm] plugin to control radio tuners
* [http://foobazco.org/projects/gradio/ gradio] -- in Debian, but not currently active
* [http://linux.bytesex.org/xawtv/ radio] -- a curses-based radio application by Gerd Knorr, part of xawtv; see [http://dc.qut.edu.au/cgi-bin/man/man2html?1+radio man page] (most distros)
** [http://w3.misterhouse.net:81/mh/code/public/v4l_radio.pl radio script] part of the [http://w3.misterhouse.net:81/ MisterHouse] project
* [http://www.stanford.edu/~blp/fmtools/ fmtools] also for the command-line (most distros)
** [http://cajun.sourceforge.net/ cajun] for making your own car or home audio system
** [http://cajun.sourceforge.net/ cajun] for making your own car or home audio system
** [http://www.dashpc.com/ DashPC] for car radio and more from Linux Automotive
** [http://www.dashpc.com/ DashPC] for car radio and more from Linux Automotive
* [http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/ gruradio] -- the GNU software radio, testing phase; cf. [http://comsec.com/wiki?GnuRadio2.X wiki]


If you're a user, post your installation and use experiences here!
== User experiences ==

If you're a user, post your installation and user experiences here!

=== gradio ===

I tried gradio on Debian amd64, as it's available; it's very basic. If you don't have the card on /dev/radio, start with

gradio -d /dev/radio2

No recording capability, stable gui, minimal functionality -- tuner and volume. I had to hand-edit the .gradiorc configuration file to get station presets; I may have missed some way of doing this through the gui.

=== gnomeradio ===

Clearly a more sophisticated application. There's only a debian package for i386, so I'll need to build from the tarball. Since I'm mainly interested in remote recording, I'll try fmtools and radio first.

=== fmtools ===

The package contains two binaries, fm and fmscan. To pick up all stations even with very weak reception, I issued,

$ fmscan -d /dev/radio2 fmscan -d /dev/radio3 -t 18 -i 0.1
Scanning range: 87.9 - 107.9 MHz (0.2 MHz increments)...

Nice and clean. I added an antenna, but still got weak reception. This is very useful for testing the radio and finding the stations; does it support directing the sound to a file? I try various combinations and end up with this to get 100% volume:

$ fm -d /dev/radio3 89.9 65535
Radio tuned to 89.88 MHz at 100.00% volume

Weird. I don't see a way to record; do I need to use sox? I don't know if I'm getting any sound, as I don't have speakers on this box.

=== radio ===

The radio package has a single binary, radio. The man page says it looks for the kradio configuration file ~/.kde/share/config/kradiorc. Failing that, radio tries ~/.radio. I issue,

radio -c /dev/radio3

and get a blue and red curses screen, very cool. Arrow keys increase and decrease frequency in 0.05 intervals. I'm clearly not picking up any signal to speak of. I figure I have a lower-level issue with the tuner.

Revision as of 06:15, 12 June 2005

Radio applications

A number of v4l cards have a radio receiver/tuner.

The following applications control the tuner. Gnomeradio and kradio, the most fully featured applications, are not yet available in all distributions and need to be compiled first. Some of the older applications are mature and readily available, but no longer actively developed.

User experiences

If you're a user, post your installation and user experiences here!

gradio

I tried gradio on Debian amd64, as it's available; it's very basic. If you don't have the card on /dev/radio, start with

gradio -d /dev/radio2

No recording capability, stable gui, minimal functionality -- tuner and volume. I had to hand-edit the .gradiorc configuration file to get station presets; I may have missed some way of doing this through the gui.

gnomeradio

Clearly a more sophisticated application. There's only a debian package for i386, so I'll need to build from the tarball. Since I'm mainly interested in remote recording, I'll try fmtools and radio first.

fmtools

The package contains two binaries, fm and fmscan. To pick up all stations even with very weak reception, I issued,

$ fmscan -d /dev/radio2 fmscan -d /dev/radio3 -t 18 -i 0.1
Scanning range: 87.9 - 107.9 MHz (0.2 MHz increments)...

Nice and clean. I added an antenna, but still got weak reception. This is very useful for testing the radio and finding the stations; does it support directing the sound to a file? I try various combinations and end up with this to get 100% volume:

$ fm -d /dev/radio3 89.9 65535 
Radio tuned to 89.88 MHz at 100.00% volume

Weird. I don't see a way to record; do I need to use sox? I don't know if I'm getting any sound, as I don't have speakers on this box.

radio

The radio package has a single binary, radio. The man page says it looks for the kradio configuration file ~/.kde/share/config/kradiorc. Failing that, radio tries ~/.radio. I issue,

radio -c /dev/radio3

and get a blue and red curses screen, very cool. Arrow keys increase and decrease frequency in 0.05 intervals. I'm clearly not picking up any signal to speak of. I figure I have a lower-level issue with the tuner.