FM radio receiver kit

[icko]

Hello does anybody know any good kits around for FM (stereo) receivers?

There aren't much out there, I have only found one:
TDA7000 FM Receiver TV Tuner
Anybody tried this one and can tell me about the quality?

Or if anybody knows any other ones?

[oinky]

Hello icko!

You're right that not many FM Radio Kits are sold nowadays. I dare say that exactly zero of them are above average quality-wise. A few kits with either TDA7000, TDA7021T or TDA7088T (even stereo versions with TDA7040T PLL decoder) are sold here in CR, but I guess that's not helping much?

When I was about 10 years old, I built few FM-only radio kits featuring TDA7000 and LM386 IC as an AF amp. The receiver RF section was even a bit more complex than the one from electronics-diy.com - It had band-pass filter on the input, heh. Speaking from experience, any TDA70xx monolithic receiver needs to be preceeded with about 2 sharply tuned L-C filters to reach reasonable level of selectivity and even then it's kind of.. well, crappy one. Usable for local reception and/or VOX, though.. and fun to screw with.

[TBC...]

[oinky]

[ C*ntinued.. - Funnily enough, I though that there was 1000 chars posting limit ]
Note that the article also seems to be misleading: Looking at the spectrograms of TDA7000 or TDA7010T reveals that above pilot frequency there's nothing at the detector pin. So even if you connected the MC1310P to the AF output, you'd still get nothing except MONO RECEPTION while tuned to stereo broadcast. Frankly, I'd even like to be (somehow) proven wrong on this point, but.. [Anything above and including TDA7020T is stereo-capable if equipped with suitable decoder, of course.] I still have 2pcs of TDA7000 lying around here.

On a side-note, techdesign.be sells two Stereo/RDS Receiver Kits, ships to Europe, and the one with NXP TEF6901 IC appears to be quite superb in terms of FM reception. (to TDA7000 anyway. Almost anything is.) Not very cheap though...

Recently I fiddled with a Toshiba Single-Conversion FM Superhet IC (10.7MHz IF) Easily assembled radio, easy to adjust, works with a stereo decoder if desired and down to Ucc=0.95V. It's so simple that it can be build on universal PCB. (But maybe you'd still like to build a kit with nicely made circuit board as I did in my younger days. ) The downside is that it requires ceramic filter(s) for the IF stage (Digikey, Mouser have them.) Will post more if you're interested about the design / building.

[Cobra2]

http://electronics.dantimax.dk/Kits/...712843722.html

http://electronics.dantimax.dk/

Arne K

[oinky]

And another one:

http://www.geocities.jp/xbcyx938/e-kitenglish.html

The chip works down to 1.8V. Very suitable for portable use in fact. Propably uses two wirewound coils, so it's easy to align.

[icko]

Thank you Oinky and Arne.

I was on the way buying a TDA7000 kit, so thank you for talking me out of it.

Im going to check out the links and the TEF6901. Thanks again.

[CERhala]

You can find some really great AM, FM and SW Radio kits all with full instructions and support here:

http://www.cercurtiss.com/cgi-bin/pp...&kits&FM+Radio

http://www.cercurtiss.com/cgi-bin/pp...&kits&AM+Radio

enjoy!!

[DF96]

It is a reasonable assumption that most FM radio kits are rather basic one-chip kits with performance which falls far short of hi-fi standards. So I guess it all depends what the OP means by "good".

[adason]

Maybe not hifi, in general FM signal by design is quite a good quality.

Once upon a long time ago, I took line level signal out of sony clock radio and fed it through better amp to better speakers and was quite satisfied with the sound. Not hifi, but fun.

For testing purposes I often use my mp3 player (sansa) which comes with fm stereo, to test new amps or speakers. Not too bad for device half the palm size.
Many times I was surprised with FM signal quality of my cell phone (sony experia). But I do not use it for testing purposes, burning $500 cell is more expansive then $50 mp3 player.

[w5jag]

The Elenco AMFM -108CK is one of the better, perhaps the best, kit on the market at the current time.

It is dated in that it uses an LC tuner, and does not have stereo output. You can build an outboard stereo decoder.

AM/FM Radio Kit (Combo IC & Transistor) - Elenco

Win W5JAG