Rockbox Development > Feature Ideas

Weather Radio Reception (US/Canada)

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micahcochran:
I looked at the datasheets for chips used for FM reception, and I don't think this is currently possible.  I am posting this because I hope that I am wrong.

Weather Radio is a US/Canada government run service to alert people to bad weather.  Weather radios are a push model that the alarm goes off when they recieve a particular signal.  A computer generated voice tells your what watch or warning has been issued.  Even without that they work in the 162.4 - 162.55 MHz bands, well outside of standard AM or FM.  Still, you can buy radios without the alert feature that listen to these bands.  That is exactly what I would like my Sansa Fuze to do.  Here's the Wikipedia page for Weather Radio for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_radio

I thought it would be handy to have a device that I normally have around me that can listen to those bands during bad weather.

I looked through the git under [rockbox.git]/firmware/drivers/tuner/ and found the serial numbers of tuner chips supported.  I looked up the datasheets and only found mentions to FM and AM bands.  Therefore, I determined that from the spec that this is probably not possible in current supported media players.

I live in a place that frequently has tornado activity.

I think it is a neat feature.  Anyway, am I right or am I wrong about being able to support this with current players?

Thank you,
Micah

saratoga:
If the data sheet doesn't mention a way to do it, its probably not a bad bet that there's no way to do it.

bertrik:
Indeed, many of the tuner chips we support can go lower than the US/EU band, down to 76 MHz for Japan, but I think none of them support going higher.
On some chips you can in theory calculate a channel number that is outside (higher) than the usual FM broadcast band maximum of 108 MHz.
I doubt if that will actually work though (e.g. internal oscillators / mixers might not go that high).

redblade8:
http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/8767

Apparently this patch can stretch the tuner frequency by a bit...There was another one that could go higher? I can't seem to find it right now...maybe it was deleted for some reason..?

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