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Hardware

PCI Shortwave Receiver 188

Posted by michael from the hamtacular dept.
payman writes "WiNRADiO Communications has just announced news of its forthcoming WR-G303i PCI based shortwave, digital radio, narrowband FM receiver. This is said to be "the world's first dedicated shortwave receiver on a PC card. It is also the first commercially available receiver where the entire final intermediate frequency stage and an all-mode demodulator are entirely executed in software, running on a personal computer." Winradio has in the past supported Linux for its products (see Linradio), and it most likely will continue to do so with the WR-G303i."
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PCI Shortwave Receiver More

PCI Shortwave Receiver

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  • I know my TV Tuner card has a ton of it.

    And what's on shortwave that isn't streamed like the BBC?
  • If they plan Linux support, why exactly is it called the "WiNRADiO" (complete with the cool-in-1992 lower case i's)?
    • I know this was probably a rhetorical question but here's the answer: Marketing. The makers of this product want to be associated with things/people that are commonly viewed as "winners". By most people's standards Microsoft is a winner with their insane marketshare. Many here on Slashdot (and elsewhere would disagree) but such people are usually not the first targets that come to the minds of marketers.
    • If they plan Linux support, why exactly is it called the "WiNRADiO"

      Probably by association to Winmodems, which are cheaper to manufacture than real modems because most of the signal processing is offloaded to software (as someone once said, "using a $200 CPU to emulate a $7 UART").

      From the blurb (no I didn't read the article!), it sounds like they are not only doing the same thing here, but they are actually proud of it and consider this to be a bullet-point feature.

  • When you said PC-card, I thought it might be PCMCIA.

    Now THAT would be a fun card to stick into my HP 200LX. :-)

    • Re:Ohhhhhh... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      When you said PC-card, I thought it might be PCMCIA

      Yeah me too until I read the title of the article, "PCI Shortwave Receiver." Oh wait I read that first.

    • Re:Ohhhhhh... (Score:2, Informative)

      by waddgodd ( 34934 )
      They make PCMCIA versions of the rest of their lineup: I doubt one will be long in coming. Of course, the rest of their lineup also starts at $500, so don't expect cheap...

  • Very Cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by m0rph3us0 ( 549631 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @10:36PM (#4348404)
    This looks pretty cool, and does 6Mhz AM, little known fact that you can listen to lightning storms on 6Mhz AM world wide. If forget the homepage of the group but there is a group using 6 Mhz AM and RDF equiptment to plot lightning strikes across the world. If anyone has a link to the group it would be much appreciated, can't even find it on google. --morph
  • God, I hope so! An HP or Tek costs the same as a small house.
    • Spectrum analyzers are designed to display a very large portion of the spectrum. Radios are designed to amplify a very small portion of the spectrum.

      When was the last time you used your home sterero as a spectrum analyzer?
      • When's the last time I analyzed a radio specturm with my home stereo? Why just today, when I tuned the happy frequency selector on my Marantz 2270 across the band and noted where there were stations... Gee, I bet the software for the winradio could probably turn its tiny virtual knob faster than my fat fingers can spin the dial and maybe even a computer could be used to record signal strength vs. frequency. Now isn't that spectrum analysis?
        • ...And you're missing the point too. Anyone stupid enough to suggest that a shortwave reciever should be used as a general purpose spectrum analyzer should go back to high school.
          • Is that where you learned how to spell receiver? Just curious ;-) The point is that you can use a general purpose receiver as a spectrum analyzer, whether you hook a sweep generator and o'scope to it's IF or write down the results by hand with a pencil and paper. Not as nice as a new HP, but it may serve the purpose. My spectrum analyzer is a Cary 15 UV/VIS spectrophotometer, mechanical drive. Not exactly radio, but maybe you get the point?
  • What can this actually do for me? I read the article (read: advertisement) and I'm still lost on what this does. It's a shortwave radio. Great. Can I get local radio stations with it?

    I'm not being sarcastic or anything, I'm just curious of to whom this is relevant and why.

    • Re:Okay, now... (Score:3, Informative)

      by m0rph3us0 ( 549631 )
      short wave is generally used for long distance communications, its very useful if say you want to listne to a world cup game in italian and live in a non-italian country. Shortwave is used by many people but its not as popular as your standard commerical AM / FM frequencies. If you want to listen to your local KISS 96.whatever station this card isnt for you. If however you want international radio and things like that then shortwave is very cool. I don't know if the reciever my ham friend was using was short wave or not but we always listen to the space shuttle comms. channels with his gear. Someone on here can probably tell me if shortwave is the frequency they use. something tells me its in the 140Mhz area which is not shortwave.

    • Re:Okay, now... (Score:2, Informative)

      by fatboy ( 6851 )
      What can this actually do for me? I read the article (read: advertisement) and I'm still lost on what this does.

      With a DSP directly in the IF section, any damn thing you want it to. :) Instead of having circuitry to "detect" the information modulated on the radio signal, you use mathematical algorithms to "detect" that information. It's AM/FM/AFSK/FSK/PSK/Spread Spectrum/SSB and any other mode that can be devised capable. You simply write software to detect the information you want.


      I know it's not the answer you were looking for, but I hope someone else was.

    • Yes, you can get local radio stations with it. The AM and FM "local" stations use certain frequencies which you can learn from reading the dial or its manual.

      Notice in the specs the "0.15-1.5 MHz band". 1.5MHz is 1500KHz, or 1500 on an AM radio dial. FM is around 100MHz, and you can see that is well within the specifications.

      What is interesting, however, is that this device is under software control. You can use it to scan to build a list of active frequencies, scan frequencies and let you hear any transmissions, monitor and log activity (for uses such as monitor interference from frequencies near those which your company radios use), record favorite shows, or merely spin the dial over a much wider range of stations than just the local broadcast stations. ("This is The Voice Of The Andes...")

      Also note the note that some frequencies might be blocked due to laws in some countries. If your country forbids reception then... well, maybe you can only listen to your government's official station, so you'll have to check what frequency it is on. Assuming your country's radios reveal the frequency and have more than an "ON" switch and a dial for selecting between "1" and "2".

      • Re:Okay, now... (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        this page [winradio.com] says "9 kHz to 30 MHz"

        AFAIK, none of the commercial FM stations in the US are in that range.
        • what you WANT is this: the main Winradio 1500i (too bad it's ISA... hmm. no pci cards?

          The frequency range is 150 kHz to 1.5 GHz, and you can use all their fancy software to decode all kinds of things.

          Of curse, being the Land of the Free, as stated on the site, "the US version excludes cellular frequencies 825-849 and 869- 894 MHz"

          So order one from Canda and have it shipped down.

  • ...doesn't it bother people when the 'lin' in Linux syllable replaces the 'win' syllable in Windows? Linmodems, LindowsOS...it makes it sound like cheap imitation cereal with crappy names like "Honey Buzzles" instead of "Honey Combs" and "Nutty Nuggets," etc.

    Anyone else get annoyed by this?
  • What bands are locked out due to ECPA and similar laws abroad?

    What DRM is included in the hardware and/or software?

  • Like I don't hear enough Clearchannel radio in the CAR!

    {Note the subtle humor before modding}

  • GNU Radio? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Russ Nelson ( 33911 ) <slashdot@russnelson.com> on Friday September 27, 2002 @10:53PM (#4348460) Homepage
    If these guys have Linux support, then what is Eric Blossom doing with GNU Radio? And why have these two articles about SDR been posted today?
    -russ

  • Anyone here a ham radio buff? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ShooterNeo ( 555040 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @11:05PM (#4348487)
    Granted, ham radio buffs are a thing of the past (I bet those same geeks were the first people on the internet and the early online services like compuserve in the late 80s) but I always had one basic question.

    Since shortwave is more or less a party line with pure analog transmission, what stops an unscrupulous person from spamming it and making it unusable to everyone else? Sure, if you did that in the US FCC troops would come bust down your door but what's to stop, say, Sadaam from having a party one day and jaming all short wave channels with a few hundred megawatts of propoganda.

    • Since shortwave is more or less a party line with pure analog transmission,

      There is plenty of digital traffic on HF.

      what stops an unscrupulous person from spamming it and making it unusable to everyone else?

      The ITU [itu.int]. Even though I do remeber Castro took 1510 WLAC here in Nashville, along with other stations on the East Coast, off the air around 1989 because of "TV Marti". (Sorry for no links. I'm lazy.)

    • ham radio buffs are a thing of the past

      Uhhh, not quite.

      what stops an unscrupulous person from spamming it and making it unusable to everyone else?

      It happens [arrl.org]. Also see this. [google.com]

      but what's to stop, say, Sadaam from having a party one day and jaming all short wave channels with a few hundred megawatts of propoganda

      It would take a hell of a lot of transmitters and electricity, antennas, etc, and you could easily track the source of the transmission through triangulation.
    • Nothing stops them, except they need the money and the will to do it. This was commonplace in Cold War days, when the Evil Empire was jamming all the time.

      Iraq shortwave broadcasting exists but is "erratic", they say [grove-ent.com].

      - AA6E

    • ...but what's to stop, say, Sadaam from having a party one day and jaming all short wave channels with a few hundred megawatts of propoganda.



      If you've ever listened to any ham bands you'd see that he doesn't need to make it unuseable. It pretty much already is. And if he did try, he'd be drowned out by a few loud idiots. There's a reason I let my license lapse many years ago - the hobby got "embraced" by a large number of CB types and it all went down hill.

      • If you've ever listened to any ham bands you'd see that he doesn't need to make it unuseable. It pretty much already is. And if he did try, he'd be drowned out by a few loud idiots. There's a reason I let my license lapse many years ago - the hobby got "embraced" by a large number of CB types and it all went down hill.

        Don't lump all of us in with the guys down on 75 Meters. If you had tuned around, you would find alot of really nice folks on the air, but if you look for a bunch of jerks, that's all you will find.

        • Yes, there were (and probably still are) nice folks, but I just got tired of the few jerks, who seemed to drown everyone else out. I mostly hung out on 40 and 20m cw, and constantly got chased out by people intentionaly jamming things. Another factor was the Russian woodpecker (is that thing still around?). It just got to the point where it wasn't fun anymore. Admittedly, this was back in the early 80's - maybe things have changed.

    • Re:Anyone here a ham radio buff? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Saturday September 28, 2002 @12:02AM (#4348622)
      ham radio buffs are a thing of the past

      Ham radio hobbyists provide an important redundant channel that is extremely difficult to knock off the air. When the hurricanes and earthquakes are done, all a Ham needs is a car battery and a length of wire to make contacts all over the world. Here is an article on use of Ham radio during some problems on Mir:

      http://www.hamradio-online.com/1997/jun/mircrisi s. html

      And here is one on activities associated with Isadore that are in progress as I type this:

      http://www.arrl.org/

      There are currently about 680,000 licensed ham operators in the US.

      This a large number to relegate to the past..

      I bet those same geeks were the first pepple on the internet and the early online services like compuserve in the late 80s)

      Hams were much more likely to run their own BBS than hang out on a service like Compuserve.

      what stops an unscrupulous person from spamming it and making it unusable to everyone else

      Te short answer is: The Laws of Physics.

      It is possible to jam a few frequencies here and there, but to jam shortwave transmissions world-wide takes something with the power of a solar flare. That's a lot more than a few hundred megawatts.

      During the cold war the Soviet Union + Warsaw Pact tried (and mostly failed) to jam transmissions like the Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, KOL Israel, Radio Tirana and the BBC to their own populations. Estimates were that they were spending about $1 billion per year, had 200 large scale jamming stations and were putting out about 1 terawatt of EMR.

      • "and were putting out about 1 terawatt of EMR."

        Where did they get all the electricity for that? Especially considering that the total electricity generating _capacity_ was 811 gigawatts [doe.gov] for the US in 2000 (note all generators/plants are probably never at peak capacity at the same time)?

        I'd say that terawatt number is as reliable as a unmaintained 10 year old car...
    • Granted, ham radio buffs are a thing of the past (I bet those same geeks were the first people on the internet and the early online services like compuserve in the late 80s)

      There are a few of us left. And yes, I was early on the internet. Like about 1975, when it wasn't much more than a few networked university and DoD computers. And I was early on Compuserve as well. I fit your profile to an uncanny degree.

      what stops an unscrupulous person from spamming it and making it unusable to everyone else?

      One thing is vigilante justice. When someone makes himself an obnoxious ass on a ham band it isn't difficult to find him (transmitter hunting is something some hams do for amusement). Retaliation can range from putting a pin through his coax to more drastic measures.

  • Check Out These Cool Frequencies! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    * 1100 UTC Radio New Zealand, 17675 kHz; check also 6105 or 6145 as possibilities
    * 1300 UTC Radio Australia 5995, 6020, 9580, 11650
    * 1400 UTC Radio Australia as above
    * 1500 UTC Radio Japan 9505 kHz
    * 1600 UTC Voice of Russia 9470, 11675, 11775, 15490
    * 1700 UTC Voice of Russia as above and 9560 kHz.
    * 1800 UTC Voice of Russia as above and 7305, 7340, 9765, 9775, 9890 kHz.
    * 1900 UTC Voice of Russia as above and 12070 kHz.
    * 2000 UTC UAE Radio Dubai 13675 (Arabic)
    * 2100 UTC Voice of Iran 15084 kHz (Farsi)
    * Radio Kuwait 9855 (Arabic)
    * 2200 UTC Radio Sofia, Bulgaria 7535, 7545 kHz
    * Radio Cairo, Egypt 9900 kHz.
    * Voice of Turkey 9445, 9460 (Turkish)
    * Voice of Greece 9395, 11595 (Greek)
    * 2300 UTC Radio Austria Int. 5945, 6155, 9870 (German & English)
    * Radio Prague, Czech Rep 7345, 9435
    * RAI Italy 6010, 9675, 11800 (Italian)
    * R. France Intern'l 9715, 9790 (French)
    * Voice of Germany 6100, 9545, 9730 (German)
    * Radio Exterior, Spain 9540, 9630 (Spanish)
    * Vatican Radio 5880 (Italian)
    * 0000 UTC BBC World Service 5975, 6175, 9590
    * 0100 UTC Brazilian stations between 4750 & 5100 kHz
    * 0200 UTC Brazilian stations between 4750 & 5100 kHz
    * 0300 UTC CKZU St. John's, Newfoundland on 6160 kHz
    * 0400 UTC CHNX Halifax, NS on 6130 kHz
    * Radio Villa, Dominican Rep 4960 (Spanish)
    * Ecos del Torbes, Venezuela 4980 (Spanish)
    * 0500 UTC R. Havana Cuba 9820, 9830 kHz.
    * Voice of the Andes, Ecuador 9745, 12015
    * WWCR Nashville, TN 5070 kHz
    * WBCQ Monticello, ME 7415 kHz
    * Voice of America 7170, 7295, 9700
    * 0600 UTC Radio For Peace, Costa Rica 6975, 15050
    * R. Mexico Int'l 9705 (Spanish)

    You can also check out military, air traffic, even natural phenomenon like solar flares, lightning storms, and things.

    Here's another list. [polkcounty.org]
  • What exactly does this device do? It lets me listen to radio stations on my computer? Or is this picking up the ham radio frequencies?

    Could someone give me an overview of what exactly this is useful for?

    I'm not trying to troll, I'm just a little confused about what this thing does and what it is useful for.

    • Re:Dumb Question (Score:4, Informative)

      by kingsqueak ( 18917 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @11:30PM (#4348552)
      Yes.

      It will do a bit of both. It covers spectrum up to 30Mhz, in that range there is plain old AM radio, HAM radio, commercial marine, military. There's all sorts of transmission modes in there too; plain voice on AM, voice on SSB, morse code on SSB, FM, data of several types.

      One of the things you can do for example is receive weather fax's, you can 'snoop' other forms of data communications as well with add-on accessories. Not sure how the radios on a card work with add-ons or if the software can do it outright inline.

      What I found odd was the mention that this was a first of some sort, there have been PC based radios similar to this for a long while, and third party linux frontend support as well. Check out freshmeat, there are other radio frontend controller projects too.

      Personally I like having a seperate radio device, it's better for the toy factor and at least a little bit safer as far as picking up static discharges on the antennas, which just creeps me out with antennas that go direct to a PCI card.
      • I answered my own question reading the details. This puppy has completely variable IF due to all of it being a software engine. This won't mean much to the average Joe, but for a radio enthusiast on paper at least it could be very cool.

        The IF in my very ragged terms is what is used to 'mix' with the signal input to create the output. There are 'dead spots' in any radio due to a sort of overlap situation with the fixed or narrowly variable IF and the actual spectrum space. The advantage of completely variable IF is one for the real radio fanatics but it's still a neat innovation. Now whether a radio on a card is 'quiet' enough that it would even matter....this is making me curious enough to hunt one down to check it out.

        Oh yeah, used HAM 'HF' rigs are available cheap on ebay and make fun toys and halfway decent shortwave rigs. There are several computer control frontend projects kicking around, compare the models supported and go shopping. SWL (short wave listening) can be a nice diversion.
        • The IF in my very ragged terms is what is used to 'mix' with the signal input to create the output.

          You described the local oscillator and its output, not the IF. Most radios use a variable-frequency local oscillator for tuning...its output and the antenna input (possibly RF-amplified) are fed into a mixer. The mixer produces sum and difference signals on all input frequencies; the frequency you want to pick off is the intermediate frequency (IF). A fixed-frequency tuned circuit picks off this signal for demodulation, amplification, etc. As an example, let's say you want to tune in 840 kHz on the broadcast AM band. The IF used in an AM radio is (typically) 455 kHz. If the local oscillator produces 385 kHz, the 840-kHz input will be downmixed to 455 kHz (840-385=455). Tuning the broadcast band requires a local oscillator that produces anything from 55 to 1245 kHz. (Note that if the local oscillator could produce 1295 kHz, you could pick up 840 kHz at what would appear as "1750 kHz" on the dial (1295-840=455). Better shortwave receivers employ two or three mixers at different IFs to make sure each station only appears once. FM receivers use two mixers as well (1st IF is 10.7 MHz, 2nd IF is the same 455 kHz used for AM).)

          IFs are typically fixed-frequency tuned circuits, since it's easier to make a good fixed-frequency tuned circuit than a good variable-frequency tuned circuit (TRF receivers and crystal receivers are examples of radios built around variable-frequency tuned circuits). Since the "circuit" involved in the WinRadio is really just some software, they aren't as bound by the limitations of real coils/capacitors/etc. and can use whatever IF they want.

    • Shortwave is great for long-distance transmissions. Think in terms of thousands of kilometers. End result: you get to listen to radio stations from other continents. Not terribly impressive in the days of internet radio, I'll admit, but it's still pretty cool. It doesn't require anything but a decent receiver (good ones can be had for less than a hundred bucks US, don't listen to obsessed hobbyists who tell you different) and some batteries.

      I'm especially fond of Deutsche Wella [dwelle.de] (Germany's international broadcaster) and Radio Netherlands [www.rnw.nl].

      I don't know anything about ham radio, so I don't know if this card would be any good for that. This looks like a fun card to play with. I've been using the mic jack on my PC's sound card to record shows, but it's an older model and I have to turn it on and tune it manually. With one of these cards I could just set a cron job and not have to be on hand.

      • Thanks for the link. Radio Nederland was my fave back in the day. I even bought a vinyl music festival LP from them back when. Along with the BBC, my other faves were Radio Kiev and Radio Moscow, both had really good music shows and some interesting culture discussions and the like.

        Ah, nostalgia, aka "I feel old" :)

  • I noticed that WiNRADiO also sells some other cards that can monitor frequencies other than shortwave radio...one card, the WR-3700i-DSP [winradio.com] can monitor the range from 150kHz up to 4gHz...if everyone had one of these, would it be possible for a group like SETI@Home to make a huge, distributed radio telescope? Just a thought...
    • Well assuming the neighbors didn't mind the gigantic dish in place of their houses.

      Also remember, with SETI the whole project centers around the fact that their existing antennae pick up so much data it requires a global effort to process the information. They aren't lacking for the ability to listen, merely to interpret the overwhelming amount of data they already collect.
    • In a word, yes. I have a WinRadio 1550e, which allows monitoring within the waterhole (~1.4GHz) which is where most amateur seti astronomers look.

      I have a dish [gornall.net], which had to get signoff from the secretary of state before I could install it :-) The picture shows the width of the house, with the dish being approx 4m across...

      Making an interferometer poses major problems with time resolution though - to merge all these amateur radio telescopes together would (a) take a huge chunk of bandwidth for each telescope (ADSL ain't enough...), (b) need excellent synchronisation between the telescopes, which almost all of us don't have, and (c) need the dishes to be steerable, which most of them aren't...

      There is however a project argus [setileague.org] doing the same thing with lots of individual telescopes. As soon as I'm happy with the s/w running on mine, I'll be a member of the group :-)

      And no, no aliens yet :-)

  • Um honey you know that baby thing we're saving for... I was kidding, oh it turned blue, darn.

  • Atencion: Seis Siete Tres Siete Cero (Score:5, Interesting)

    by plimsoll ( 247070 ) <5dj82jy7c001NO@SPAMsneakemail.com> on Friday September 27, 2002 @11:37PM (#4348565) Homepage
    This could be a great opportunity to further explore the fascinating world of so-called numbers stations; espionnage TX's from shadowy intelligence organizations (as if there were any other kind) all around the globe- encrypted with one-time pads and allowing agents to receive orders with nothing more than a modified walkman.

    An excerpt from NPR's Lost & Found Sound [npr.org]:
    "Eventually, if listeners dig around [the shortwave spectrum] long enough, they'll tune across voices reciting endless strings of numbers. These broadcasts have been heard for at least 40 years. The signals are powerful, but they contain no information about location of the transmitter or the intended audience. Most listeners linger for a short time, then tune away, utterly baffled."

    When I discovered these myself, I found them bizarre, chilling- and intriguing. In order to get some background, I ordered a 4-CD set from Irdial recordings in the UK called The Conet Project [ibmpcug.co.uk]... highly reccomended.

    What is perhaps the most surprising is that the number of numbers stations boradcasting on the shortwave band are only increasing- variously attributed to the increasing sophistication of organized crime, drug cartels, terrorist/separatist organizations and an increasingly fractious global intelligence community.

    Do follow the links above if this intrigues you in the slightest- and just try going back to your insular world-view afterwards; "the enemy" is out there, and he's hiding right out in the open.

    • /. Article (Score:2, Interesting)

      by plimsoll ( 247070 )
      Sorry to reply to my own comment on this, but I (now) see this has been covered a bit already...

      Crack a "Numbers" Station [slashdot.org]
      Posted by Hemos [hemos.net] on Sat 27 May 01:35PM
      from the cool-insight dept.
      boss soul [circling.org] writes: "On Friday, NPR did an excellent story [npr.org] on those infamous 'Numbers Stations' that broadcast on shortwave radio. Since the 1950s, these stations have been broadcasting nothing but an unidentified human voice reading a string of numbers. Though most people believe that these broadcasts are used by intelligence agencies to communicate with their agents abroad, there has never been any way to confirm this ... until now! The makers of "The Conet Project" [ibmpcug.co.uk] (a four-CD set of numbers-station recordings) have thrown down the proverbial gauntlet and announced a series of "cryptographic challenges" [ibmpcug.co.uk] -- the object of which is to crack an actual numbers station broadcast. Dust off your Crypto caps, everyone -- I want to see a slashdotter win this one! "

      • You realize that, assuming they were spies, they almost certainly used a one-time pad, right? As in flammable little books of numbers which were used on very short messages, and used only once. Unless the spy made a mistake, those aren't crackable, though it'd sure be interesting if someone found one where they slipped up... :]
      • I wouldn't want to crack a numbers station, I'd want to know how to receive it, and generate a cancellation broadcast.

        Now that'd be an interesting project.
    • Back in the 1970s I was a heavy shortwave listener and I remember those "numbers stations" well. They were sometimes an object of discussion on regular shortwave stations!

      When I moved to California in 1984, I was appalled to discover that shortwave signals here are too weak to listen to -- couldn't get ANYthing. In Montana, I got tons of shortwave stations, plus sometimes could hear Radio Nederland's *AM* broadcasts from the Antilles!!

      • I don't know where you are in Cali, but when I was in the Santa Clara Valley, I could pick up most stuff being broadcast in the US, and plenty from southern & northern east Asia. With a really lousy CW radio, no real antenna, and a horrid light dimmer in the next apartment that would always flood the whole SW spectrum with the most irritating buzz.

        You need, in this order:

        1. Antenna, Antenna, Antenna! Go to RadioShack and get their 75 foot length of copper SW antenna wire & figure out a good place to string it. Follow the directions.

        2. The step above should solve 99.9999999 percent of your problems, but failing that, get a better radio. $99 should get you quite a decent rig at Fry's Electronics.
        • When I tripped thru eastern/central Wash in the 70s, Calif. in 1981 (Sacto/Auburn area) and 1982 (San Diego/L.A.) I brought along the very portable radio I'd used in Montana for over a decade... and was astonished to find that its normally strong reception (even without an external antenna) was reduced to little or zilch. When I moved to the L.A. area in '84, I did try it with my big antenna (vertical mast with a bunch of secondary wire, worked *really* well) that in MT was only needful for weak stations, and still got nothing really listenable. Dunno if I was just "lucky" or what, but had no luck to speak of anywhere up and down the Pacific interior basin (beyond the coastal range).

          Haven't tried since I moved up here to the high desert. That radio croaked a while back and my older s/w, tho a honkin' big serious outfit my dad paid big bucks for, never had the reception the cheap-assed portable did. (And admittedly by now I'm out of the listening habit, but it's still fun to remember.)

          Much of interior CA and SoCal is effectively radio-dead even for clear channel (the real meaning, not the chain) AM stations, and often you're lucky even to get local stations -- frex I can't get a trace of the Albuquerque truckers' station that is blast-your-ears-strong all thru the entire mountain and midwest regions, even to southern Canada. Dunno how relevant that is to s/w.

          BTW I wouldn't touch anything from Fry's that wasn't namebrand and independently warrantied. Fry's pulls too much scummy crap. Go read the writeup from Forbes magazine a few years ago (it comes up on their site if you search for Fry's). If anything it understates the problem.

  • I remember looking for something that would allow me to hook up a radio to my PC (and be controlled by it) but at the time there were no PCI devices and the USB one's were FM only.

    Anyone know of a AM/FM addon that's not ISA? (Oh, and not having to use my soundcard's linein would be nice.)

    Or would this new card be it? If it's as low cost as they say maybe having shortwave and God knows what else wouldn't be such a bad thing...

  • one ham's opinion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Saturday September 28, 2002 @12:17AM (#4348664)
    I'm a ham, such items normally interest me.

    I visited the site (at least it's not slashdoted), but I have no interest in this hack. Here are my complaints:

    I wasted time looking at their site, but s far as I could tell they don't want to tell me the price on the thing. If the price is listed anywhere it is certainly not easy to find, even a targeted price range. Do they think I'm so hard up to have this that I'll tell them I want it even if they will not tell the price?

    While they don't seem to want to tell the price, they did mention that there will be a standard software demodulator and an optional "Professional demodulator". And more demodulators later. They don't say what the professional demodulator will cost, but as it is optional it certainly will cost. So why would I want to buy their stuff and have crippled non-professional software? And on top of that they know the professional modulator can be replaced with something else in the future that will obviously cost me more money!

    OK, I know it costs money to develop software, but in this case when the software is tightly tied to their hardware, I want a company that sells me the hardware and then supports me, not one that tries to bleed me dry, even delivering less than professional software with the basic package and then asking if I want the good software! Of course I want the good software. What I want even more is good open source software, or even hardware interface specs so that I can roll my own. But that is hardly likely to be forthcoming from a company that looks at their hardware customers as cash cows for their software.

    There are other issues as well, the inside of a PC is hardly the best environment for a RF receiver. But I might be willing to experiment with this hardware if it was sold with decent software without a bait and switch approach, and the company was more open about things like the prices and the hardware interface.

    • Re:one ham's opinion (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This seems to be a common problem with HAM radio in general. It has actually been like that ever since I can remember (back maybe 20+ years).

      I call it engineer syndrome. For some reason engineers feel compelled to patent and hide everything they do. It's a superiority complex, but not some some programmers have, it's every single damn one of them bastards. There are tons of HAM's (ie. engineers) that have stifled the hobby by wasting time hiding all their secrets to then only have the project/products die soon after.
      • This seems to be a common problem with HAM radio in general. It has actually been like that ever since I can remember (back maybe 20+ years).
        I call it engineer syndrome. For some reason engineers feel compelled to patent and hide everything they do.

        Every radio I have gotten has always come with full schematics and block diagrams. I'm not sure what you are talking about.
    • Winradio tends to have open SDK's for their products, and be free with their specifications. Professional stuff is often simply a software change, not hardware.

      I'm sure they provide an SDK so you can write your own demod if you don't like the one you are willing ot pay for.

      Also, call any shop that deals Winradio, they will be more than happy to tell you their prices, I'm sure.

      Perhaps the price isn't on yet because they aren't ready to sell them yet.
      • I'm sure they provide an SDK so you can write your own demod if you don't like the one you are willing ot pay for.

        You can be sure of it if you want, but since I saw absolutely no mention of it on their webpages I'm just as sure it's not available. And I see no reason to try to track down the price on this thing. Maybe it isn't ready yet, so what? They could at least give a suggested retail price or a "less than $xxx" price. If they can't do that then the rest of the advertisement (and that's clearly what it is) is a waste of my time. The real insult is that they want me to give my e-mail address and sign up to be perpetually spammed by them, but can't give me the basic information to see if this thing is an incredible bargain or an overpriced hack.

    • > I wish y'all would put an estimated price up on the page... maybe
      > it's there somewhere but I didn't see it.
      >
      >

      Thank you for your enquiry. The price will be approx US$500.

      Thank you for your interest in our products and we look forward
      to be of service to you again soon.

      Best regards,
      Martin Kent
  • It sounds interesting, but does it need that 64-bit PCI slot for throughput reasons, or simply for its shear weight?

  • SWL Blah Blah Blah (Score:4, Informative)

    by alamut ( 122156 ) on Saturday September 28, 2002 @01:27AM (#4348901)
    why would i even bother?

    for 300$ US i can get an Icom PCR-1000. it does 60Hz-1295Mhz (stupid cell blocked, bah!), has windows, linux and even macos support, only needs a serial interface (works just fine on a USB->serial adapter, even), and i can place it as far as i want from my RF noisy computer shack.

    and it uses 13.8vdc. get the picture?

    did i mention it was 300$?

  • Not to put anybody down, but if this is a card that must be installed in a computer, why then isn't the software executed on a small microprocessor on the card, relieving the main processor from having to mess with it? After all, this is how graphics boards are made faster, and come to think of it, even keyboards work this way, so why shouldn't every peripheral do its internal work in the peripheral?

  • I take it one of these could be used to recieve weather fax signals- does anyone know of any open source software/hardware projects that can re-build the weather maps from the A/D signal??

    A laptop solution would be a quite useful for remote sites.

    A simple search on freshmeat & sourceforge doesn't turn up anything.

    What's weather fax? [francisperey.com]
  • Like any peripheral, there are two basic approaches to interfacing with the beast:

    1. Internal. This is the Winradio approach. The good news is that, as processors become faster and faster, they're able to absorb more of the electronics into software layers. The latest WinRadio is akin to all those Winmodems we've seen. However, the environment within a computer case isn't exactly the best place to put an RF circuit -- it's full of all kinds of strong fields and oddball harmonics.

    2. External. A much nicer place to put your radio is in a nice RF tight box a few feet away from all that nonlinear harmonic crapola. And, after all, the output is relatively low bandwidth, so bring it into the system through an I/O port -- USB, 1394, heck even a serial port will do.

    What you really want is an Icom PCR-1000 [icomamerica.com], covers 100 kHz to 1.3 GHz (continuous if you shop in Akihabara), multimode. Hook it up to a serial port and an audio in jack, and you're all set to vacuum the ether.

    Or, just check out the JavaRadio [javaradio.com] network of PCR-1000 equipped sites around the world...

  • That kind of device cries out for a USB or FireWire interface. It doesn't need the extra bandwidth of the PCI bus, but it would be nice to be able to move it from machine to machine without having to take the computer apart.

    Something in that direction is the ICOM PCR-100 receiver (serial port for control, audio output for--audio). Unfortunately, open source software seems less common in the amateur radio and shortwave communities--people seem to come from a DOS world, which limits what you can do with many of the computer controllable receivers and radios. Still, there is some software, e.g., http://qsy.to/pcr/control.html.

    • That's probably because computing in ham radio predates the Free/Open Software movements by more than a decade. Most of the first microcomputer hobbyists were hams, because amateur radio shortwave nets allowed people to swap experiences and help each other out. And of course, many of the first applications written were for the ham shack, from RTTY terminals to logbooks to propagation forecasting to satellite orbital prediction.

      As time wore on, programs written for the x80-CP/M environment were ported to the x86-DOS world because that's what was available, and most radio applications required what the PC gave you -- the whole machine. But, in all this time, there was never a heritage of code-sharing, since making a little money on the side allowed you to defray the costs of the hobby. That's one well-known characteristic of hams -- they're cheapskates by nature or pick it up as they go on -- and as a result many ham radio innovations are economic, not technical.

      As more modern multitasking operating systems showed up, non-realtime apps have been ported to them, and some amazing semi-realtime DSP work has been done, such as the various PSK31 implementations. And many of these are at least of an Open philosophy -- almost all of the PSK31 implementations, for example, are based on a single core DLL produced under a "share and enjoy" license.

      So indeed, amateur radio comes from the DOS world, and the Free Nuxis have a lot of catching up to do.

  • "...the world's first dedicated shortwave receiver on a PC card."

    Don't force it, get a bigger hammer. Or an editor. (It's that way on their site too...)
  • Does anybody know if there are other applications for this kind of hardware except for listening to sound transmissions (radio/chatbox/intelligence)?

    One of the things i could imagine is the DCF77 signal here in Europe (radio broadcast of atomic precision time at 77 kHz). Others might be GPS (although this probably is to complicated to do entirely in software).
  • TenTec [tentec.com] has had a similar product out for quite awhile. The RX-320 [tentec.com] has been out for a couple of years, and (IMHO) is a much better solution. The RX-320 is an external general coverage receiver that is completely DSP based. I've had one of these for a couple of years and love it. TenTec even publishes a complete "programmer's guide and schematic" [tentec.com] on their website, which includes the entire spec for controlling the radio. Using this spec, I've written control programs in C, PHP, PDP-8 assembler, and am now working on one in PDP-11 assembler.
    The RX-320 is encased in a steel box and seems to be fairly impervious to RF interference, at least in my environment. It also doesn't take up a slot inside the pc which could be used for other things.
  • When I was in college my fraternity had an antenna on the roof of the house connected to a receiver that let us listen in on analog cell phone and cordles phone conversations around campus and around town.

    It is my understanding the the FCC prohibits the sale of devices (in the US) that pick up the frequencies needed to do this anymore.

    Will this device tune into these prohibited frequencies? I admit I don't know the first thing about what things transmit on various frequencies. At the time we had a big frequency catalog that told us what channels to tune into to listen to cell phones, Air Force One, cordless phones, and many other interesting things.
    • I guess this link answers part of my question. It appears this receiver works in a wide enough range to pick up any analog cell phone or cordless phone signal and listen in. Am I reading this correctly?

      http://www.howstuffworks.com/cordless-telephone1 5. htm
  • I know how triangulation 'works' but I don't know the specifics. How close do the three receivers have to be to get decent accuracy?

    Having a nation wide network of PCs with these cards would allow you to triangulate pretty much any transmission. Just put your desired frequency into the network and coalate the data from your peers.

    Cool stuff

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