PCS-Electronics

Hello,

I'm planning to build a basic FM broadcasting setup at home with a PCIMAX3000+ inside a pc on linux (latest ubuntu).
I have a few questions about what can be done...

I'd like to:
- use the digital audio input/pc sound card USB profile
- use the RDS option to match the song title played
- use a python script to start/stop the broadcasting and send the RDS info.

Do I need to wait for a custom linux driver to use the digital audio input (saw that on another thread) ?
If such driver is never released, or is not compatible with the linux release I use, I guess I could still use the analog audio input, but what about setting up the settings and parameters ?
How can I send the RDS information in realtime to the PCIMAX3000+ programmaticaly ? Should I use this same driver with some C/C++ dev ?
Or could I use some USB virtual com port to send it to the card ?
Could I start / stop the emitter programmatically too using this very same interface ?

My main concern is about having to rely/depend of some custom drivers that would hardly be maintained over time.
If some generic USB audio and com drivers (for example) could be used, that would be great...

Thanks for your help,

Nicolas.

Hi,

we have some guys working on linux driver now.

I can tell you that:
- Generic audio input exists so this should be no problem, also virtual serial port.

Once finished software should be fairly portable, there's nothing critical (such as pci drivers).

Regards,
Marko

OK, thanks for your reply!

I'll wait for the new drivers to be released and then I'll go for the PCIMAX 3000+...

Regards,

Nicolas.

Hello,

Any news about the linux driver ?

Thanks,

Nicolas.

Unfortunately none.

Do we really need a driver ?
Can I (or somebody else) bring some help to get the PCIMAX300+ supported on linux ?

Old PCIMAX cards seemed to have a PCI interface, but as I understand how the PCIMAX3000+ works, it just provides a USB interface with:
1) a USB audio card
2) a USB virtual com port

Could a recent linux distro like ubuntu 12.04 recognize the USB audio card, and the virtual com port ? If not, we should try to get some linux USB driver from the provider of the USB interface chip...
Are you using any FTDI chip, for example ?
Can you confirm/tell us more about the chipset used, their driver status and if they are supported on linux ?

The only thing left would be then communication between the PC and the PCIMAX3000+ (and/or the onboard RDS module).
I, for example, could write a basic tool and GUI to read/write the parameters from/to the card, that's an easy task... but for that, I would need access to the protocol you defined to exchange commands/parameters on the virtual serial port.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Nicolas.

Hi,

we have a guy working on a open source driver, he promised to let me know as soon as it is out.
We have provided him all the info and support he asked for.

If its not out by end of August contact me again and I'll enter into the same agreement with you.

hi there, I'm the guy working on the Linux "Driver".

Right now it's rather a control application, as it is hard to turn it into a real driver, because the card is registered as
a generic virtual usb serial interface.

The goal of the app is to provide an easy way to set the FM related settings and control the data that is transmitted over
RDS. It won't interface with the usb-audio device.

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edit: software has been released
http://www.pcs-electronics.com/phpBB2/v ... php?t=2636
http://github.com/koradlow/pcimax-ctl

For the sake of completeness, the (generic) usb audio device will be recognized by recent distributions.