Re: Controlling and reading a usb radio

[Deron <de...@pa...>]

>> My attempts at a custom frequency changing program will generate pops 
>> in the audio output when changing the frequency, but the audio is 
>> silent. The radio program 
>> (http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~baker/devices/lxr/http/source/xawtv-3.95/console/radio.c) 
>> seems to enable the radio as when it is started the audio goes from 
>> silent to static, but I get the error "VIDIOCGAUDIO: Invalid 
>> argument" twice to console and changing the frequency does not 
>> generate any change in audio output. No pop, no change to static.
>
> Ah, you're using an old version of xawtv which uses the no longer
> supported v4l1 API, there is a newer version here, hopefully its
> radio.c version will work better:
> http://git.linuxtv.org/xawtv3.git
>
> Regards,
>
> Hans
>

I just used the URL as reference thinking it was the latest. I actually 
installed the program with apt-get install radio as I recall, and it 
seems to be old as well. Compiling the latest requires X11 which is a 
bit crazy for a server. I'm going to strip out the frequency change 
commands and see if I can get it to work...


.........

IT WORKS!!!

With the following (roughly) commands, I can make it work:

nano /etc/modprobe.d/radio.conf
add: options radio-usb-si470x space=0 band=0 de=0

cd /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usbhid
echo '4-1:1.2' > unbind
modprobe radio-usb-si470x
cd /sys/bus/usb/drivers/radio-si470x
echo '0x12cf 0x7111' > new_id

/dev/radio0 now exists and responds to proper commands. I can record 
with arecord -D "plughw:CARD=Radio,DEV=0" -f cd >audio.raw


So what can I do to make this permanent so as to survive resets of the 
server?

Can I do anything to help get this added to future releases?

And Hans, I owe you an AlertFM device :-) Would it be of any use to you? 
The device also supports some new US EAS like system, but it is not in 
my area (yet?) so no idea what would be required to make that work. Just 
happy to have the radio working properly now!

Deron