Muff's Modules & More

[Veqtor]

Surfing the am-waves for wonderful drones has made me wonder, isn't there some manufacturer producing a voltage controlled am/mw and fm receiver?
It would be a very cool module!

[gde]

this has been discussed on various sdiy forums and lists (here too i think...)

the main reason one doesnt commercially exist is probably because voltage control over a radio is a tricky thing to do and radio itself is pretty finicky...

[syncretism]

There was a fella at AHMW 2007 with a VC FM module; I think it was homebrewed, but perhaps it was one of the many Ken Stone-derived designs in his rig. Maybe George Mattson will make a HAM module; he's quite the radio enthusiast =)

[gde]

FM seems to have more options
theres some simple FM transmitters and receivers made for use with microcontrollers and ive seen some people use max and arduino to interface to them

didnt fluxmonkey homebrew one?

[Illiac]

http://home.earthlink.net/~erinys/tech.htm

[Illiac]

bah, upon closer inspection there is no cv.

[wetterberg]

yes, it was discussed not a few months ago on [sdiy] - main thing is that usually the frequency is controlled by a variable capacitor, not easily put under voltage control.

there should be an archive available online to see the thread, there were some good suggestions in there.

[JP]

bump, I've been doing some digging this morning, as I think an AM or FM, radio with CV would really be rather handy, especially if the output could be used as CV.

Does anyone have any ideas about how to get a ball rolling and breadboard something up?

Other thread I found was here…

http://electro-music.com/forum/viewtopic.php?highlight=radio+module&t= 34656

[JP]

Here's my lo-fi thinking. Buy a small hand held transistor radio, gut it, find the pot that controls the tuning, add a vactoral along with the pot.

CV controllable radio

I'm not even hoping for great reception, I just want interesting noise. Really want I'm hoping for is being able to tune in and sequence the crackles and hisses.

[daverj]

the tuning isn't done with a pot. It's usually a multi-plate variable capacitor. A vactrol won't work.

There are special diodes that vary capacitance with voltage, but the amount of capacitance is tiny compared to what is typical of the tuner in a cheap transistor radio.

The best way might be to find a cheap digitally controlled radio and use a PIC chip's A-D to convert a voltage into a digital control.

[JP]

Good catch on the incorrect pot assumption, I just found a bunch of info about coils and variable capacitors.

Ugh. I think I need to do some more digging.

[richard_k]

Ramsey Electronics sells a shortwave radio kit model SR2C for $45 USD that has a varactor diode for the tuning mechanism. That can be modified for voltage control. Look here for the web page with the information http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&ke y=SR2C

They also sell an FM broadcast receiver model FR1C for $43 USD. See http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&ke y=FR1C

The Ramsey kits aren't know for the highest quality but they do work and the price is reasonable.

[JP]

Ohhh nice find, thanks !

[Rod Serling Fan Club]

Interesting, I hope someone does this and is willing to share the information. These radio threads keep popping up but don’t go anywhere. I think all forms could be useful, AM and shortwave for weirder/noisier stuff. I think FM could be cool if you could develop a fast scanner type of system, it would almost be like a random sampling wave-table.

[fluxmonkey]