Nokia adds FM radio to N800 Internet tablet

Technocrat

Nokia adds FM radio to N800 Internet tablet

wowbagger

Wed Feb 07 16:49:54 -0800 2007

Electronics.

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It's not often that a company ships a gizmo with an entire hardware feature unremarked upon and unsupported, then later turns it on free of charge - but that's what Nokia did with the new N800 Internet tablet. They just released a package which enables an FM radio tuner in the unit.

This is really funny - a couple of days ago, folks noticed an entry in the N800's /sys directory for an FM radio. "It must be a mirage - a trick of the light. The I2C routines must be confused. No way did Nokia put a radio chip in there - they've not said anything about it!"

Just a few minutes ago, I was looking at the Nokia applications page to get the latest kernel with NFS client support in it, and BEHOLD - there was an application, released by Nokia, named "FM Radio".

Naaah - but what the heck, I can trust this source - so I installed it.

And it works.

Kudos to the Nokia team for this.

Nokia adds FM radio to N800 Internet tablet

zogger

Wed Feb 07 19:43:22 -0800 2007
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so, it works good? Where is the tuner, just get another menu entry show up on the screen? And where is the antenna? The wire for the headset/earbud, like a lot of small radios?

anyway-neat! extra surprise features are ok as long as it doesn't mean extra surprise *bugs*.

Nokia adds FM radio to N800 Internet tablet

wowbagger

Thu Feb 08 05:22:00 -0800 2007
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The tuner shows up as a small applet on the desktop

which allows you to:

Set the radio volume (and mute)

Start/stop playing

Bring up the main application window

Change which radio station is tuned

The main UI lets you scan for stations, add them as "channels", and switch between the audio coming out the headset and the audio coming out the speakers.
They are using the headset as the antenna, so you have to have it plugged in to have any sensitivity. When I get to work I'll see what happens if I use a signal generator - roughly how sensitive it is. I suppose I could go into the screen room and use the calibrated antenna — but I won't.

Some very rough parametrics

wowbagger

Thu Feb 08 07:24:09 -0800 2007
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I did a very rough test of the sensitivity of the FM receiver without the headset plugged in. Given a 1mW signal into a small rubber duck antenna, the N800 could hear the signal at about 2 inches from the duck - in other words, absent the headset it is DEEEEEEEF.
That is *not* to be taken as a criticism of the unit - I'd have been surprised if they could have done better. You have to intercept the RF photons if you want to demodulate them - and the N800 itself doesn't have enough size to do so. With the headset, it does as well as most other portable receivers.

Nokia adds FM radio to N800 Internet tablet

..since sliced bread

Tue Apr 03 12:26:10 -0700 2007
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Hi,

I got on the http://downloads.maemo.org/product/fmradio/ site

and downloaded the FM application.

My problem is how do I install the app?