any hobbyist satellite digital radio tuner

[amg]

Is it possible to build your own satellite radio tuner?
I guess they do not sell the chip sets to hobbyist?

 

[Ian Stirling]

Is it possible to build your own satellite radio tuner?
I guess they do not sell the chip sets to hobbyist?

Possible, yes.
In practice, it's a horribly complex project, with basically all
the difficulty of a satellite reciever, digital decoder, and MP3 player
all added togethter.

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Possible, yes.
In practice, it's a horribly complex project, with basically all
the difficulty of a satellite reciever, digital decoder, and MP3 player
all added togethter.

Sounds like the perfect college senior design project! ;-)

(Someone who just finished his own USB project and -- on a USB bulletin
board -- saw a regular stream of, "My professor says I need to interface a
PIC to a USB-connected NTFS (with encryption) RAID array and implement a web
server interface over a Gbps Ethernet connection to retrieve the files. In
3 months. How should I proceed?")

 

[amg]

I can see a chip which is satellite receiver, then, music player.
Aren't those chips already consumer items?
The chip inside may be complicated, but connecting it and make it work seems
like maing a MCU controller works.

 

[Ian Stirling]

I can see a chip which is satellite receiver, then, music player.
Aren't those chips already consumer items?
The chip inside may be complicated, but connecting it and make it work seems
like maing a MCU controller works.

In theory.
In practice, it tends to get rapidly more complex.
For example, the satellite reciever will need to be properly designed
and shielded to obtain the required noise figure. Microwave design
is a whole arena of problems in itself.
The music player chip won't accept the raw output from it, you're going
to need to convert the datastream coming from the satellite reciever
output to the right format, as well as hooking the tuning from the satellite
reciever stage to the output of the data stage in the proper way.

I would >GUESS< that if you can get the right chips, you're looking at
at least a dozen large chips (with 100 connections or more), another
couple of dozen smaller chips and several hundred passives.

 

[Ian Stirling]

Sounds like the perfect college senior design project! ;-)

(Someone who just finished his own USB project and -- on a USB bulletin
board -- saw a regular stream of, "My professor says I need to interface a
PIC to a USB-connected NTFS (with encryption) RAID array and implement a web
server interface over a Gbps Ethernet connection to retrieve the files. In
3 months. How should I proceed?")

Kill the professor, replace the documentation, and build a LED flasher.

 

[Rich Webb]

Kill the professor, replace the documentation, and build a LED flasher.

Damn you, Ian! Now I have coffee sprayed over the monitor and keyboard.

 

[Frank Raffaeli]

Kill the professor, replace the documentation, and build a LED flasher.

Then fail the course ;-). I know you are joking, but the simple
approach doesn't fly in industry, either. It used to be we could put a
few parts on a PCB and call it a "product". Now it takes software,
firmware, RF and packaging just to get a "device". Developing a
product then takes marketing, sales, and other disciplines where I
know little.

Frank Raffaeli
http://www.aomwireless.com/
Frank Raffaeli

 

[Paul Hovnanian P.E.]

Is it possible to build your own satellite radio tuner?
I guess they do not sell the chip sets to hobbyist?

Maybe, maybe not. If you can get the parts and build the radio, how are
you going to get a decryption key to make it work?

 

[amg]

That's what hobbyists do.
I can see all the ham radio go digital and satellite.
Don't you?

 

[Dbowey]

amg posted:

<< That's what hobbyists do.
I can see all the ham radio go digital and satellite.
Don't you?
In the future, you should copy into your message, the message to which you are
responding.

No, I don't see ham radio going all digital and satellite. There is an
interest in both, but if that is *all* hams wanted they would just use a
cellphone or only play at ham radio on 2M.

Don

 

[Ian Stirling]

That's what hobbyists do.
I can see all the ham radio go digital and satellite.
Don't you?

Err, no.
I can see spending time making things that are available, to make a
saving.
I cannot see spending more than the retail price, and several hundred
hours in making an inferior device.

And I'm not exactly typical, I'm making parts for a four stage orbital
rocket at $10000 all-in, in the garage.