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Message from vitesse at Tuesday, 15-Sep-09 20:02:09 GMT
Many user ask information about my FMDX-Montreal node here a few general information about it.

This project is custom build. The Radio is an XDR-F1HD from Sony and use Olivier work from FMDX-Toulouse. The radio use a small piece of hardware, a Seeduino development board to control the radio by it infrared port (like you would do with the remote control that came with it).

I have made a modification to decode RDS information from inside the radio, so it give more information then what you could see on the radio screen. The RDS signal is decoded by the Seeduino board.

The antenna can be rotated. I had to make the controller myself as nothing exist already made (to my knowledge). The system use simple TV rotor, Arduino board and Apache web server + php extention to control it inside the Globaltuners radio interface (below the flash player). This is not a perfect system but proved to be working for almost a year now. Maybe some day Globaltuners will have a better and single Antenna rotor system as this is a frequent question from node operator or people interested in having one.

The antenna is a design from Peter Korner. The antenna have been build by VHF Teknik from sweeden and shipped by DHL international service. By the way never use DHL for international freight, they charge more then double the cost of the shipment after you received the merchandise. This is a 15 elements Yagi with a boom length of 147” I do think this is one of the best antenna available, but You could have a better deal for your money from commercial antenna like triax or other similar. Even double stacking it would probably produce more result then a single Korner. But personally I like the antenna. It's put at 35 feet high on a standard antenna tower (Modified to be easily bring down with a winch and hinge).

I use an ultra low lost cable From TimesMicrowaves, a LMR-600-75. Probably overkill for only 75 feet, but I had a deal on it. Found a connector for this cable is a real pain, so probably better to buy something more common.

The radio screen can be viewed with the help of my Microsoft vx-1000 web cam. I made a small graphic based on radio face plate to view the screen.

If audio quality is your main interest, The audio signal is encoded with the help of a semi professional sound card. An M-audio audiophile 2496 at 44.1khz in 16 bit. You can listen from the internal flash audio signal at 128kbps or less. You can listen in real-time (with no delay but maybe audio skip) at 192kbps from unreal media player. You can listen the radio with your external favourite player in 32, 128 and 192 kbps AAC+ The aac+ signal is encoded with Edcast encoder and relay with icecast server.

In resume, for this project to work it use Globaltuners software like every node, Sony XDR softwares so Globaltuners can communicate with the receiver and software for the antenna controller (written in C like language inside the Arduino and in php for the webserver remote control.). This project use work from Ivo, Olivier, Steve, Yves and Myself

A guide have been made to build XDR node and a guide have been made explaining how I have made my rotor controller..

Hope this help other better understand the project.
Message from veso266 at Thursday, 10-Oct-13 10:37:00 GMT
can you please make a guide for Rotation?

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