Just one question I haven't found covered in the readme file:

Does RDS AF work correctly while the unit is playing mp3?

Wouldnt want to journey several hundred kilometres just for testing that...


bye,
[L]

I thought AF was to find alternate frequencies while listening to a given radio station. When you're playing MP3s, by definition, you're not listening to the radio... I don't understand the question?

If you've enabled TA (traffic announcements), you want the player to be listening to the radio for you when you're not. And you want it to be retuning the radio so that it can keep doing so. 2.0b13 did the former, but not the latter. ISTR the team saying that 2.00 final would fix this, and I guess that Lemmy does too.

Edit: and also, you want to be able to switch back to radio at any time and have good reception of the station you were last listening to.

I don't know whether AF is intended to behave this way but it's the behaviour I'd want. If I left the tuner set to a TA station and started listening to mp3's while driving, I'd want it to search for AF's so that it might continue bringing me TA's the further away I drove from the starting transmitter.

Sorry, I thought TA and AF were separate and unrelated features. Serves me right for living in the US, where I can't test this stuff out.

I believe this was one of the issues we addressed. Unfortunately we get very little RDS testing from the alpha team so I would be interested to hear how well it works for you.

Rob

No prob's. Just send me copies of any upcoming alpha builds you receive and I'll test the RDS on your behalf and nobody need ever know

I've been using b13 with a pca tuner for a month or two now and have never seen AF or TA work (the latter doesn't really surprise me) but listening to Radio 1 or Radio 4 I would expect to see AF work.

I have just upgraded to 2.00 and with the AF debugging mode get "no AF information available", as described by others in the 2.00 thread.

Paul

TA worked ok for me on b13 as it did today on 2.0. Like you though, I've never had a TA on BBC-R1 or R4.

I'd want it to search for AF's so that it might continue bringing me TA's the further away I drove from the starting transmitter.

I've gone so long without radio that I forgot all about EON (Enhanced Other Networks). This would allow the radio to switch from a national station to a local station for a TA. There's a layman's explanation here in pdf.

Does this functionality exist in 2.0?

In reply to:

---

And you want it to be retuning the radio so that it can keep doing so. 2.0b13 did the former, but not the latter. ISTR the team saying that 2.00 final would fix this, and I guess that Lemmy does too.

---

Yea, that's exactly my point.

The main point of having a RDS-AF+RDS-TA tuner in your car is not having to care for those little road signs which tell you the current fm frequencies for traffic announcements, no matter wether you are listening to the radio, cds, mp3 files or whatever...

btw, seems that you can't switch off AF ??

been listening to a station with bad reception and it kept trying other frequencies. Hit upon one which happened to be on one of the AF frequencies, but a totally different station, and too weak to get any PI code across..
So i switched off AF, but the empeg still kept trying to cycle through the frequencies, and got stuck every time on that frequency...


bye,
[L]

This is all bizzarre. The problems you're describing existed in some of the 2.0 RC's but were fixed for 2.0-final. If the tuner doesn't get a valid PI within (I think) two seconds then it will tune back to the original station. This was tested and seemed to work fine.

Rob

Is it possible that you released the wrong version?
AF is definitly not working. I tried it with at least 10 different stations here in Switzerland (all with supported AF) and non of them work (Debug screen always empty)
Is AF working for someone with the final release 2.00?

It's not the wrong version of the firmware, but clearly something is up. The only person it seems to work for is Toby.

Rob

If I left the tuner set to a TA station and started listening to mp3's while driving, I'd want it to search for AF's so that it might continue bringing me TA's the further away I drove from the starting transmitter.

That's a very precise definition of how one would want RDS to work.
I've just taken a pool car, with a Jaguar RDS/Cassette from the office and driven it to the bottom of an escarpment where I know it changes frequencies from the Pennines to Teeside, and it does so. I did the same route in my car with the Empeg, and it hung on to the one frequency.

I then stuck a radio walkman, tuned to Radio Leeds (How do people listen to that stuff), in one ear and sat in the car, with the other car next to it whilst I waited for Radio Leeds to have a traffic broadcast:

The Empeg continued playing its MP3

The pool car switched from the cassette to the TA, as one would expect.

So something isn't quite right yet, I'll keep experimenting as I drive around.

Footnote: Since the last posting, I've driven round Leeds doing various errands, with Radio 2 on, and our office junior's eyes superglued to the fascia. The debugger never moves from the "No AF information" message.

Same here in .de

Any FM station that does TA here has RDS-AF as well. none works. With all of them the debug screen says either no or not enough AF data, and if it doesn't it's haywire.


bye,
[L]

In reply to:

---

The only person it seems to work for is Toby.

---

You can add me to that list (maybe it's in the name), as I had it working last night on a stock install - but I haven't had success when using Hijack 23[59]. Trying Hijack 221 tonight.

Mmm.. I wonder if there's a dependency in the player on having serial port access for this to work? I ask, because one person has pointed out that it works for him without a Hijack kernel, but not with Hijack installed. And the only way I can imagine Hijack impacting the player is that, in car mode, it forces -s- on the player command line.

??

I have uploaded a simple varient of the Hijack kernel for testing a theory about this issue.

Could you, and anyone else in Europe who has this problem (with Hijack installed), give this copy of Hijack a try and report back (here) as to whether or not it makes a difference?

http://rtr.ca/v329+s.zImage

EDIT: this is for mk2/mk2a only. If you need a mk1 kernel, let me know (here).

The only thing new with this version is that it no longer forces '-s-' to the player on startup in DC/Car mode..

Thanks

I've uploaded v329+s; expect a report tomorrow morning when I've tried it in the car.

I just installed the original empeg kernel for version 2.0 final from your hijack download page.
In this version the AF also does not work. Maybe it's not a hijack problem, but a configuration one.

Summary:
Original empeg upgrade file seems to work (Not testet by myself)
Original 2.0 kernel from the hijack site does not work

Have you compiled this version with some special compiler options?

>Have you compiled this version with some special compiler options?

No. I extracted the original binary directly from the .upgrade file.

-ml

I've uploaded v329+s; expect a report tomorrow morning when I've tried it in the car.

Ditto!

Just tested this kernel briefly, no time to waffle now, but that hasn't solved the problem.

Still get state = WAITING, AF freq count = 10, Signal Strength = 0

More tomorrow,
Toby

give this copy of Hijack a try and report back (here)

I installed it, got the same no AF information available, took it off, now I can't cancel the no AF information message on any FM radio function.....HELP!

I've just checked and AF doesn't work for me while HJ is installed. My installation/test sequence was:

2.00 (clean) - OK
v329+s - NOT OK (Doesn't get past 'WAIT')
kernel.v2final - OK

Post in haste, repent with a red, red face

I hadn't realised that the debugger wasn't a toggle, I've cancelled it, now that I've found clicking on radio in info does so.

However, the only message that I can get on the debugger is the no AF information one - that's with no hi-jack on.

Good news is that the TA worked this morning whilst I had the player on, I had it tuned to Radio 2 and it gave me the Humberside traffic report, which I think would also indicate that the EON function is operative.

However, during the journey to work, I normally get traffic reports from four different stations ( the downside of the RDS/TA system). The fact that I only got the one, may indicate that the AF isn't working.

I would be happy to drive around and see if I can trigger the AF, but unless I can get more info showing on the debugger, it won't prove much. As I pointed out in my previous post, I know a place 10 minutes away that always triggers a change of frequency on the AF, and it didn't yesterday, so my assumption is that AF isn't working.

No change for me, either - it's still displaying the "Wait" message.

Also, and I've no idea if this is related, but it has only happened since I installed the new v329+s Hijack: Last night when I was listening to mp3s, the player started glitching after about 2 to 3 minutes, then a couple of minutes later locked up entirely. This was happening on songs I've listened to over a dozen times before, so I don't think it's anything to do with the mp3 files themselves. Pulling the unit and re-inserting started the pattern over again. I also noticed that when it was in radio mode, after a while the menus started to move slowly and jerkily. Could there be something eating resources, maybe? I've just plugged the player in here at work, and it's been playing fine for ten minutes, so it doesn't seem to be happening in AC mode.

I'll drop back to the stock kernel and see if still happens.

Cheers,

Could you, and anyone else in Europe who has this problem (with Hijack installed), give this copy of Hijack a try and report back (here) as to whether or not it makes a difference?

http://rtr.ca/v329+s.zImage

Just to fully cover the subject, I can't tell you, at the moment, whether this version of hijack makes any difference, because I get the no AF information message, with, or without it.

http://rtr.ca/v329+s.zImage

Just FYI, Hijack v330 was released yesterday with reworked serial code(?) so v329+x is redundant I guess.

v330 worked for me on the drive to work this morning.

While I'm here, has anyone else noticed the AF mechanism switching to a frequency that gives worse reception?
I was listening to BBC-R1 which has lots of AF's and It did that to me repeatedly but would never revert back to the original freq. If I changed away from that preset and back again it was fine until the next time.