I have posted some of this already on the technical forum, but since it turned out to be a wish, I repeat it here:

I think it is very important for a car radio device to use RDS/TMC, at least the following features:
1) interrupt for traffice messages
2) information about the frequency changes and automatical selection of the strongest emitter available

As good the whole empeg is, the radio is really a mess. The tuner has no auto tuning, if I drive on a highway it doesn´t follow the frequencies of the radio station and the receiving quality is worse than in my girlfriends $200 Sony car CD radio.

Before implementing any more geek stuff I would be very pleased if this basic stuff would work.

Christian Hassa
SN: 285

well if you at empeg want to find out some more about TMC you can go to the TMC Forum at http://www.tmcforum.com or to the Dapartment for Transport in England http://www.detr.gov.uk/ult/urban2/dis3.htm or http://www.rds.org.uk

it is even posible to resive the information over the internet so there shout be no excuse for not having eny test data.


Mark
wait for mk III with a USB Host/slave
(USB->GPS)(USB->Bluetooth)(USB->You name it)

2.0 will have improved radio support; initial betas will not have RDS TP/TA (traffic announce) and RDS AF (auto-tuning to strongest transmitter), but we will have them in there for the full v2.0 release.

This has always been our intention - in fact, the tuner code does a lot of this already (it knows all the other AF frequencies for the current station, it just does not currently poll them and switch).

The mk2 tuner quality when tuned to the correct frequency for the area should be at least as good as a $200 radio - the tuner is a very high end module and I personally get very good, detailed sound from it. The lack of AF currently bugs me too!

TMC is a completely different thing, and will probably not be supported for a while - not least because there is limited TMC support in the UK and I believe some of it may be encrypted for subscription users only.

Note that if you have a mk1, v2.0 will still give you AF and TP, but the tuner itself is not ideal - it is very susceptible to noise, doesn't deal with multipath particularly brilliantly and has a long re-tune time, which means AF list polling will be noticable in the audio.

Hugo

As far as I'm aware, the UK trial isn't running anymore; one big problem in the UK is that the only real source for traffic information is the trafficmaster network - a company which has invested hundreds of millions of pounds in a network of sensors on almost every road in the country.

These sensors on motorways just sense speed, but on normal roads they read the numberplates of passing cars; then, when another camera in the network sees the same numberplate, they obtain a journey time for that segment - very cute! (some digits of the plate are discarded for privacy reasons).

Problem is, they already sell traffic information units, from small warning devices embedded into some GM cars to full LCD units for commercial drivers. They did participate in the trials of TMC, but I don't think they're likely to give out their data for free at any point in the near future.

For more info, try www.trafficmaster.net

Hugo

Perhaps Sonic|blue team in Germany could help with this? AFAIK, trafic info is especially good there. (Here in Croatia some stations with national coverage broadcast it and others emit RDS TI allert - virtually all stations use RDS to some extent - but quality of info is poor.)

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Unfortunately, there is now no sonicblue team (technically, anyway, there is still sales/support) in germany :(

We have plenty of normal TA/TP audio traffic announcements - that's not a problem. The problem is TMC which is machine-readable traffic info.

Hugo

Hi.

If I could help you out, by testing some software (which might include some software development/debugging under NDA), I would be happy to do so. I know TMC is used a lot in Germany, even though I never had any tuner that supported it yet.

cu,
sven

proud MkII owner (12GB blue/green/smoked, was #080000113 is #090001010)

Thanks for the offer; if TMC support becomes an issue we may take you up on that. At the moment though, the priority is more mundane RDS support!

Hugo

I do live in France and as I know TMC exists on highway.

I do not use because it needs a special receiver or an adapted Radio system.

But I know it exists in France...

I plan to implement such a TMC solution. The problem is that I don't have a tuner module yet? Any news on that?
Right now I have the TMC code and the geographic information needed for Switzerland. If it work I'll publish the result on the internet.

Please count me in if any of these tests will be done sometime. As I am a frequent traveller (travelling back and forth between cities almost every weekend) I'd really like to see such a feature.

Just as Sven, I am living in Germany and all stations here (even the small ones) are equipped with all this RDS tech stuff, so I suspect there will be at least some that transmit TMC as well.

Till

I just checked and the state department for traffic says it is available throughout the country.

Till