We record a lot of radio broadcasts here, for later playback on portable mp3 players. We normally have been getting them from internet streams of the radio stations, and more often than not from the CBC RadioOne online stream.

The problem with this is that our DSL line(s) sometimes lose sync mid-recording, and the programme episode is then ruined.

So this week I did something about it. I got a AR1010 FM Receiver Breakout Board from Sparkfun.com, along with another of the ubiquitous FT232RL Breakout Boards that I've used before for various projects. Put the two together with zero glue, and voila.. a very sensitive FM Radio for connection to a PC soundcard "line-in" jack.

We can now get the CBC recordings easily from the real radio broadcasts, no longer relying on our sometimes intermittent DSL connections.

That same AR1010 chip/board could also fit easily inside an empeg. And interfacing to it would be similarly simple -- it can use the existing internal I2C bus for control, and the audio paths can connect to the usual FM radio inputs, or to the AUX-IN port.

Getting RDS working would be trickier, as the AR1010 lacks that functionality, but its sister chip, the AR1000, does do RDS. And it might not be that hard to tie into the player through Hijack.