( An attempt ) to run GNURadio on WinTV : )

GNU Radio
1

Hello there!

Thank you for your response. I am using WinTV-PVR USB2 .

Question : Is this the right way of replying to maintain the thread of
the discussion ? Ahh well …time …say 12 hours will tell me : )

It is interesting to note that in this mailing list I can’t post to the
message board directly. Is this observation correct?

Thank you.
Alex

2

On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 09:04:23AM -0800, Alex M. wrote:

Hello there!

Thank you for your response. I am using WinTV-PVR USB2 .

OK. Not sure if it’ll work.

Is there detailed documentation, or are you just supposed to run the
software they give you? If the details aren’t available, then I
wouldn’t even bother.

Question : Is this the right way of replying to maintain the thread
of the discussion ? Ahh well …time …say 12 hours will tell me :> )

Yes, it worked :wink:

It is interesting to note that in this mailing list I can’t post to
the message board directly. Is this observation correct?

You must post from a subscribed address, otherwise the post is quietly
ignored.

Eric

3

Hi again!

It may not work ? I am doing this as an amateur project. I wish to use
WinTV hardware as an RF spectrum analyser ? Bad idea?

I did read an article on the net where a person had claimed he could
make almost any TV card with a SAA***** chip into a radio spectrum
analyser.

I was hoping to do the same with WinTV inspired by him.

I am currently trying to install GNURadio.

Question : FFTW install does not have a seperate installation guide for
Cygwin. It does have installation notes on MinGW. I guess those would do
?

Thank you,
Alex.

Eric B. [email protected] wrote: On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 09:04:23AM
-0800, Alex M. wrote:

Hello there!

Thank you for your response. I am using WinTV-PVR USB2 .

OK. Not sure if it’ll work.

Is there detailed documentation, or are you just supposed to run the
software they give you? If the details aren’t available, then I
wouldn’t even bother.

Question : Is this the right way of replying to maintain the thread
of the discussion ? Ahh well …time …say 12 hours will tell me :> )

Yes, it worked :wink:

It is interesting to note that in this mailing list I can’t post to
the message board directly. Is this observation correct?

You must post from a subscribed address, otherwise the post is quietly
ignored.

Eric

4

Hi,

A year back, there was an idea of getting the TV card vendor to make
CX23881 as a cheap ADC device. Any news on this ? With this, a crude and
slow spectrum analyzer would probably be possible. Crude here means if
there is a high spectrum peak, probably there is a radio transmission
but if there a low peak near the noise floor, then you don’t know
whether it is there or is it from digital switching noise from the
hardware itself.

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnuradio/2005-08/msg00241.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnuradio/2005-08/msg00129.html

Best regards,
Hew

Alex M. [email protected] wrote: Hi again!

It may not work ? I am doing this as an amateur project. I wish to use
WinTV hardware as an RF spectrum analyser ? Bad idea?

I did read an article on the net where a person had claimed he could
make almost any TV card with a SAA***** chip into a radio spectrum
analyser.

I was hoping to do the same with WinTV inspired by him.

I am currently trying to install GNURadio.

Question : FFTW install does not have a seperate installation guide for
Cygwin. It does have installation notes on MinGW. I guess those would do
?

Thank you,
Alex.

5

On Friday 26 January 2007 12:04, Alex M. wrote:

Thank you for your response. I am using WinTV-PVR USB2 .

As far as I know, this is a hardware MPEG encoder.

Now, BT878 and BT848 with the btaudio sound driver and with the right
connections can work as a high-speed sampler; 440kHz or something like
that.
The btaudio driver will work with baudline; one day I hope to get
baudline
and the USRP hooked together through JACK, but not yet.

Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC 28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu

6

Hew,
Do you recall what the hardware mods were? I’m wondering if I can
clean up card with caps here and there. I looked at your sine wave
data. I low pass filtered it and got rid of most of that garbage. The
tone is at 1890 Hz as far as I can tell. How did you generate that tone
and what was the center frequency? Where did you inject the tone?
-Jim

7

Hi Jim,

Can’t remember that clearly, but the idea is to get the 2nd sound IF
of the TV/FM tuner capacitively to one of the ADC inputs. The IF pin is
one of the TV/FM tuner output pin. (It might not be available in all
tuner module). I removed the existing circuit that was attached to this
IF pin, in my case, I just need to removed a 0 ohm resistor. I also
resisitively divide the IF pin output voltage just enough so that it
does not exceed CX23881 voltage level. This step might be redundant
since I do not have a oscilloscope to measure the IF pin voltage swing.

The sine came from a program written for Palm Pilot. Looking back at
the code, I guess its about 2k. You can inject the tone direct to the
composite video in and use the CX built in multiplexer to select this
input.

Regards,
Hew

Jim P. [email protected] wrote:
Hew,
Do you recall what the hardware mods were? I’m wondering if I can
clean up card with caps here and there. I looked at your sine wave
data. I low pass filtered it and got rid of most of that garbage. The
tone is at 1890 Hz as far as I can tell. How did you generate that tone
and what was the center frequency? Where did you inject the tone?
-Jim

Hew How Chee wrote: Hi Jim,

The card I use last time is PV-TV304P+ (REV .2B) with FMRC (FM and
Remote Control) . The chipset used is CX23881. The card from newegg.com
is using CX23883. Can’t tell it is compatible or not. The data I got is
8 bit unsigned. Didn’t try out 10 bit since I was quite dissapointed by
the noise in the 8 bit digitized signal. Nevertheless, it is still
possbile to digitize the 10.7 MHz FM IF with hardware mods.

Note that the source code at
Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos can’t compile and run in
Linux kernel 2.6 and is not hooked up to GNURadio. It was developed
using Knoppix Live CD 3.4 running kernel 2.4.x.

Best regards,
Hew

8

Hi Jim,

The card I use last time is PV-TV304P+ (REV .2B) with FMRC (FM and
Remote Control) . The chipset used is CX23881. The card from newegg.com
is using CX23883. Can’t tell it is compatible or not. The data I got is
8 bit unsigned. Didn’t try out 10 bit since I was quite dissapointed by
the noise in the 8 bit digitized signal. Nevertheless, it is still
possbile to digitize the 10.7 MHz FM IF with hardware mods.

Note that the source code at
Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos can’t compile and run in
Linux kernel 2.6 and is not hooked up to GNURadio. It was developed
using Knoppix Live CD 3.4 running kernel 2.4.x.

Best regards,
Hew

Jim P. [email protected] wrote: Hew,
Aren’t you the guy how figured out how to get the ADC data from the
CX23881 card into the PC? I found your website
Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos and looked at the data. I
think I’m going to get one of these cards to play with. What model
number do you have? I can find PROLINK PV-TV304P+FMRC for $30 at
newegg.com. The Prolink website says it’s 8 or 10 bits so I’m wondering
if that is the right card.
-Jim