So back in September I was talking about building a IoT Radio, and after that I switched to talking about tracking aircraft via software-defined radio. Perhaps time for a followup.
So my initial attempt at a IoT radio was designed with RDA5807M module. Frustratingly the damn thing was too small to solder easily! Once I did get it working though I found that either the specs lied to me, or I'd misunderstood them: It wouldn't drive headphones, and performance was poor. (Though amusingly the first time I got it working I managed to tune to Helsinki's rock-station, and the first thing I heard was Rammstein's Amerika.)
I made another attempt with an Si4703-based "evaluation board". This was a board which had most of the stuff wired in, so all you had to do was connect an MCU to it, and do the necessary software dancing. There was a headphone-socket for output, and no need to fiddle with the chip itself, it was all pretty neat.
Unfortunately the evaluation board was perfect for basic use, but not at all suitable for real use. The board did successfully output audio to a pair of headphones, but unfortunately it required the use of headphones, as the cable would be treated as an antenna. As soon as I fed the output of the headphone-jack to an op-amp to drive some speakers I was beset with the kind of noise that makes old people reminisce about how music was better back in their day.
So I'm now up to round 3. I have a TEA5767-based project in the works, which should hopefully resolve my problems:
- There are explicit output and aerial connections.
- I know I'll need an amplifier.
- The hardware is easy to control via arduino/esp8266 MCUs.
- Numerous well-documented projects exist using this chip.
The only downside I can see is that I have to use the op-amp for volume control too - the TEA5767-chip allows you to mute/unmute via software but doesn't allow you to set the volume. Probably for the best.
In unrelated news I've got some e-paper which is ESP8266/arduino controlled. I have no killer-app for it, but it's pretty great. I should write that up sometime.