FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Are there truly so few of us that enjoy listening to the good old fashioned radio? Why is the FM radio player app for the n900 so barebones, and why does no one seem to care about it? Who even wrote the app? Is anyone maintaining it (when I click 'about' in the app it doesn't show anything)?

I would just like some basic additional functionality:


- a straight-up, digital tuner instead of this pseudo-retro thing that I am always struggling with in trying to get it to go to a specific station

- a basic 'seek/scan' function that will hunt down valid stations (like, well, every single fm radio since about 1980)

- the ability to download a list of stations in your area and have the presets added automatically (i swear the symbian player I had on my e63 could do this)

That's about it. I spent about a 1/2 hour searching the forums but could only find an initial speculation thread from 09 and some bug reports; am I missing something? Is everyone just too cool for FM?

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

I think a lot of people are definitely using online streaming nowadays

i use the FM radio occasionally but a few times I needed to use it I had nothing with for antenna

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

I would use fm radio if the app was more usable. now finding stations is too hard

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

the fm radio application is among the most downloaded applications for the n900. it used to be #1 before fMMS came. so i don't think people are too cool for fm radio. maybe they just like the application as it is?

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

that's what I figured... but there are times when streaming is not practical: when roaming abroad, without a data plan (both of which being my current situation), hmm, maybe in areas without 3g coverage, etc. Plus isn't the move these days towards stricter caps on data usage -- do people really want to use all their megs for streaming radio?

Personally, I like the 'local touch' of radio; i like to wander into a new town and see what kind of stations it has, hear the local accents, etc; its just that much more work to do that through the internet. Plus it has a nice immediacy; I open the app, bam, sound is coming in, I didn't have to think or wait for buffering or choose from billions of possibilities.

Not to mention emergency/disaster situations...

At any rate, I'd like to know who to bug/bribe to get a few changes made... I'd love to claim I'd do them myself if given access to the source but I lack the time/skillz.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Hmm, interesting. Maybe I'm using it wrong? Which is why I was looking for a discussion thread/documentation on it... Is there a scan function built in?

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Last time i tried to scan/save channels i just thought that who ever made this has patience of monk. I find myself cursing slowness of GUI every 5 seconds unitl i gave up. Also it has just really bare bone functions.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

I think it's a nice app (thanks to the developer), also i think searching for stations could be enhanced, i'm saving the station once i found them so i'll not go through that non-easy sliding thing.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

ha, my experience exactly, though I stuck it out a bit longer. The kinetic scrolling is nice in theory but not very practical.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

I love listening to my local radio too, and use this app alot. I think the features are fine. But I just wish the audio playing wasn't interupted whenever ANYTHING else happens on the N900--like screen rotation, screen dimming, opening email, opening most programs, etc. It sometimes freezes completely just opening a browser. Don't want to complain too much because I really appreciate the work done on this.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

I want to use this as well but the constant dropouts annoy me to no end... the radio in my 5530 works much better and never drops out. I also think it looks cool but is hard to use with the current gui.... So thanks to the developer for making it possible but I would use it more if it worked better. Maybe it is more a hardware problem since it requires bluetooth to function at all.

Found this thread about who developed / helped with this at one point:
http://tabletui.wordpress.com/2009/1...adio-for-n900/

And now the actual developers blog:
http://pycage.blogspot.com/

Scroll down to the October 11, 2009 entry and the developer (Martin Grimme) talks about how it works.... interesting.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Strangely enough, the fm radio application on the n800 could download a list of local stations with frequencies. I can't understand why such a nice feature was dropped on the n900.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

The FM radio app on the N800 was made by Nokia, the one on N900 is made by community developers who had to start from scratch, so no features were really dropped, it is just a different app.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Well that story about traveling around really got to me and I decided to dload the FM Radio app again.

It's actually not that hard to use. I mean you press one of the arrows left or right down for a while and it will search the station for you. You can then save the station quite easily I think.

But it would be nice to have a digital version as well where searching for stations was a little more like what we're probably all used to.

Fire up a PM to the developer (Pycage on these forums) or contact him through the blog! :)

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Agree about the local flavor and "social" experience of listening to FM. Also agree about the dial tuning being really cool but a bit hard to use. I was thinking just the other day it would be nice to be able to scan...

Wait, what? Really? oO Was it not open source? More winnage from Nokia the Open Source Champion?

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

The program could also use an extra piece of code switching off Bluetooth once I close the application!

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

didnt know we could scan for stations on the app. The only thing i would like to clarify is that you have to keep the arrow pressed so it starts scanning, pressing once takes you to your next saved radio

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

ROFL. Click this link but I must warn you: the near-emptiness of the page combined with the white background may blind your eyes if you're browsing in the dark...

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Use Autodisconnect, it has a bluetooth auto-off feature in it.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Indeed: where is the love?

Somebody from this community was able to produce this nice app, which I found just amazing to be possible at all, and there is absolutely zero gratitude in the OP.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

FM Radio has auto scan feature. You just need to press the arrow on either side for a little longer.

I would prefer to have a database in which stations and their locations would be available for download. Also GPS could be used to automatically download correct list for that exact location.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Thanks for the tips about scanning!

Augh! My eyes! It burns...

Sigh.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

You might vote for enhancement request 7966, "Add a selectable list of radio stations - download list".

If it's a direct jump to a known frequency you're after, you might vote for enhancement request 10434, "Cannot enter frequency with keyboard". Otherwise, you may need to open a new enhancement request.

The application should be doing that already, though there's a bug still open for the issue. You could update that with the specific scenario in which it fails for you.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Absolutely agree - we should be very grateful to Martin (pycage) for the application. I don't even want to start wondering why Nokia decided not to port the FM radio app to Freemantle.

What I am more interested in, though, is how we can support Martin in improving the application. A few months ago an interesting thread involving both pycage and tomaszd was exploring further developments to the application, but nothing happened since the last update in March, despite hints at future features already planned.

I think if the interest from the community is there, we can politely ask the main contributors how we could support their efforts...

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

It looks like there's an FCC database for US stations, is there a wiki or anything for stations?

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

I, being a developer myself, feel very offended by this kind of posting and even the thread title itself.

This guy has sure spent many hours writing this tens of thousands of people are using his app. I assume that he might have gotten the same amount of donations for his apps as i got for my apps which is a total of somewhere below $100.

Guys, what do you expect?

You don't want to give a helping hand, you don't even want to waste your own time, you don't want to donate anything. Heck, you don't even ask politely for these things.

What's your goal? To piss of the few remaining maemo developers? What do you expect to happen if you mouth your request in such a manner? Do you really think a developer will say "Oh, wait this guy is seriously pissed by the software i gave him for free. I should really fix this asap". Do you really think this will happen?

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Way below $100 for all my opensource projects together (I publish opensource software since 2003). Money cannot be the incentive or I wouldn't write code in my sparetime. Special thanks to the one donator for MediaBox! (you know who you are :) )

Yes, it's true, FM Radio lacks features and development. I have some plans but I also need time for this. And I write other apps besides FM Radio (MediaBox e.g.) so the time I can spend on one app at a time is not much.

Anyway, FM Radio is opensource software. I would be happy to accept patches for improvement. Why do most opensource projects have to be one-man-shows? My time is limited.

But I can assure you, FM Radio is not dead, just sleeping. ;)
Help, criticism, suggestions, donations are always welcome.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

BTW to the OP: you can see history of the app on the package page.

I did a brief search for online radio station databases by lat/lon and couldn't find a free one. The most compehensive database might be this one: http://www.radio-locator.com, but to access lat/lon data requires licensing (i.e. paying). Without a freely-accessible database with lat/lon, how would the station download be implemented generally?

This link might be useful to those using the transmitter to broadcast to their auto stereo system.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Sorry for the double post, but i've been using FM Radio today and for the first time received calls while i had it active. Every time a call has come in there has been a problem that in most cases made the mic of the headset not work, had the radio still playing in one earpiece, and locked up FM Radio such that it couldn't be closed or reactivated. The fifth time a call came and this happened, i couldn't restart FM Radio after killing it: it said the FM radio driver was unavailable and i rebooted.

Has anyone else had trouble with receiving calls while using FM Radio?

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

This happen too me yesterday, both me and the caller thoguht the problem was at the callers end but now I`m not sure. I could hear her but she couldn´t hear me. I dont´t think this was the first time I received a call whlie listening too the radio but maybe this was the first time receiving a call while listening too the radio with PR 1.2 installed, just a thought.

My biggest problem with the radio app is that the sound disappears when doing anything with the N900 like surfing the web, recieving a sms or mms, opening another app. Sometimes the sound will come back but most of the times I have too close the radio app and start it up again too make the sound appear.

A minor problem and I do mean minor is that after using the radio app and you restart your N900 the bluetooth will be active but not visible.

I still would give this app 7/10 and it is worth downloading.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Yes, that's exactly what happens. Headphones work but mic doesn't (maybe because it's being used as antenna? I'm not really sure how that's set up electronically.) Did you have trouble shutting the FM Radio app after that?

The sound mutes when other things use the speaker but it always comes back for me.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

Yes, I did have trouble shutting the FM Radio app after that and I know that the sound mutes when the speakers is used by something else and for me 8 times out of 10 the sound comes back. That is not a big problem.

I can't use the web browser, update the email app to fetch any new email or HAM (there's no sound from them) and listen to the radio. My feeling is that all cpu and all the memory is focused on the browser or the email update and that the radio app is without and that is why the sound stops. The app is left without any resources and when I restart the FM Radio app it recieves some resources.

Re: FM Radio Application -- where's the love?
 

This sounds like bug 6407, "microphone doesn't work during a call and after closing fm radio". That bug was FIXED, but you may want to comment on, and vote for, it anyway.