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Adafruit Si4713 FM Radio Transmitter with RDS/RDBS Support Created by lady ada https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-si4713-fm-radio-transmitter-with-rds-rdbs-support Last updated on 2021-11-15 06:14:38 PM EST ©Adafruit Industries Page 1 of 26 Table of Contents Overview 3 Pinouts 4 • • • • 5 5 5 6 Audio Inputs Power Pins Interface Pins Extra GPIO Pins Assembly 6 • Prepare the header strip: • Add the breakout board: • And Solder! 7 7 8 Arduino Code • • • • • • • • • • Arduino Wiring Download Adafruit_Si4713 Load Demo Using the RPS Scanning function Library Reference Radio Transmitter control RPS (Radio Power Sensing) RDS/RBDS (Radio Data Broadcast) GPIO Control Advanced! 10 10 11 11 14 16 16 16 17 17 17 Python & CircuitPython 18 • • • • • • • • • 18 19 19 20 20 20 21 23 24 CircuitPython Microcontroller Wiring Python Computer Wiring CircuitPython Installation of SI4713 Library Python Installation of SI4713 Library CircuitPython & Python Usage Frequency Strength Scan Transmitting RDS - Radio Data System Full Example Code Python Docs 25 Downloads 25 • Datasheets & Files • Layout Print • Schematic ©Adafruit Industries 25 25 26 Page 2 of 26 Overview Yaaar! Become your very own pirate radio station with this FM radio transmitter. This breakout board, based on the best-of-class Si4713, is an all-in-one stereo audio FM transmitter that can also transmit RDS/RBDS data! Wire up to your favorite microcontroller (we suggest an Arduino) to the I2C data lines to set the transmit frequency and play line-level audio into the stereo headphone jack. Boom! Now you are the media. Listen using any FM receiver such as your car or pocket radio receiver - this is an easy way to transmit audio up to about 10 meters / 30 feet away. ©Adafruit Industries Page 3 of 26 This transmitter even has RDS/RBDS support - that's text/data transmissions that many modern FM receivers support. (It's how some car radios can display the FM station and current song playing). You can transmit just about any text you want, set the station identifier as well as the 'freeform' buffer. Best of all, you'll be up and running in minutes with our awesome Arduino library, example code and tutorial! Pinouts There's a couple pins on this here breakout, lets cover them all in groupings by 'type' ©Adafruit Industries Page 4 of 26 Audio Inputs • LIN - this is the line level LEFT input. Its connected to the headphone jack as well but in case you want to wire directly without a chunky cable, pipe line level (~0.7 Vpp) audio into here. There's an AC blocking capacitor on board so it can be DC biased • RIN - same as LIN but the RIGHT input. Power Pins • Vin - this is the power input pin. You can power the chip from 3-5VDC. Ideally you should use the same voltage you use for logic levels. For an Arduino, that's usually 5V • GND - this is power and logic ground, connect to your microcontroller's ground pin • 3Vo - this is the output from the onboard regulator, 3.3V nominal. You can use this if you need up to 100mA of 3V regulated voltage Interface Pins The FM transmitter chip requires a microcontroller for setting it up unlike pure-analog solutions that have a tuning potentiometer. The trade off is some code is needed, but the output is digitally tuned so its much more precise. Our codebase uses I2C to communicate. The chip supports SPI as well but it was annoying enough to support just I2C so we don't have code examples for SPI! ©Adafruit Industries Page 5 of 26 All the interface input pins are 5V friendly, and can be used with 3-5V logic • RST - This is the Reset pin. You must have this pin toggle before starting to communicate with the chip. When at logic 0, the chip is in reset. • CS - This is the Chip select pin, used in SPI mode. It also determines the I2C address. When pulled high (it is by default) the I2C address is 0x63. If this pin is shorted to ground, the I2C address is 0x11 • SCL - this is the I2C clock pin, connect to SCL on your microcontroller. • SDA - this is the I2C data pin, connect to SDA on your microcontroller. Extra GPIO Pins There's also two "GPIO" pins, you can use these to blink LEDs. The initial state of these pin sets up the chip for Analog Mode so don't short them to ground or VCC during reset. They are 3V output only! • GP1 - this is GPIO #1 • GP2 - this is GPIO #2 GPIO #3 is used for the 32Khz clock generator onboard. Assembly ©Adafruit Industries Page 6 of 26 Prepare the header strip: Cut the strip to length if necessary. It will be easier to solder if you insert it into a breadboard - long pins down Add the breakout board: Place the breakout board over the pins so that the short pins poke through the breakout pads ©Adafruit Industries Page 7 of 26 And Solder! Be sure to solder all pins for reliable electrical contact. (For tips on soldering, be sure to check out our Guide to Excellent Soldering (https://adafru.it/aTk)). You're done! Check your solder joints visually and continue onto the antenna ©Adafruit Industries Page 8 of 26 An antenna is required! We provide a 1meter long wire but you can also use a shorter or longer piece as desired. Strip a few mm from the end Hook the exposed wire end into the ANT hole Solder it in! ©Adafruit Industries Page 9 of 26 Done! Arduino Code Arduino Wiring You can easily wire this breakout to any microcontroller, we'll be using an Arduino. For another kind of microcontroller, just make sure it has I2C, then port the code - once the low level i2c functions are adapted the rest should 'fall into place'  (https://adafru.it/dBn) adafruit_products_wiring.jpg (https://adafru.it/pOA) • Connect Vin to the power supply, 3-5V is fine. Use the same voltage that the microcontroller logic is based off of. For most Arduinos, that is 5V • Connect GND to common power/data ground • Connect the SCL pin to the I2C clock SCL pin on your Arduino. On an UNO & '328 based Arduino, this is also known as A5, on a Mega it is also known as digi tal 21 and on a Leonardo/Micro, digital 3 • Connect the SDA pin to the I2C data SDA pin on your Arduino. On an UNO & '328 based Arduino, this is also known as A4, on a Mega it is also known as digi tal 20 and on a Leonardo/Micro, digital 2 • Connect the RST pin to digital 12 - you can change this later but we want to match the tutorial for now The Si4713 has a default I2C address of 0x63 - you can change it to 0x11 by connecting CS to ground but don't do that yet! Get the demo working first before making changes ©Adafruit Industries Page 10 of 26 Download Adafruit_Si4713 To begin reading sensor data, you will need to download the Adafruit si4713 library from the Arduino library manager. Open up the Arduino library manager: Search for the Adafruit Si4713 library and install it We also have a great tutorial on Arduino library installation at: http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-all-about-arduino-libraries-install-use (https:// adafru.it/aYM) Load Demo Open up File->Examples->Adafruit_Si4713->adaradio and upload to your Arduino wired up to the sensor ©Adafruit Industries Page 11 of 26 You may want to update the FM station transmission. By default the library transmits on 102.3MHz FM, but that might be 'taken' in your area. Find this line #define FMSTATION 10230 // 10230 == 102.30 MHz And change it to an unused frequency. This number is in 10KHz so for example 88.1MHz is written as 8810 Upload it to your Arduino and open up the Serial console at 9600 baud ©Adafruit Industries Page 12 of 26 As long as you get to the RDS On! message that means everything works, pipe some audio into the 3.5mm jack and make sure you see the InLevel audio volume range from 0 to about -10 (dB) The fastest way to test the RDS message sending is using an RTL-SDR (that's how we debugged the breakout!) (https://adafru.it/dBr) or a phone/radio that can do RDS decoding ©Adafruit Industries Page 13 of 26 Using the RPS Scanning function The Si4713 has the ability 'scan' the FM band and measure the input power. You can use the RPS functionality to locate a good unused station. Find this section in the adaradio demo and uncomment the for loop: // Uncomment below to scan power of entire range from 87.5 to 108.0 MHz /* for (uint16_t f = 8750; f<10800; f+=10) { radio.readTuneMeasure(f); Serial.print("Measuring "); Serial.print(f); Serial.print("..."); radio.readTuneStatus(); Serial.println(radio.currNoiseLevel); } */ Reupload and look at the serial console: ©Adafruit Industries Page 14 of 26 The larger the number the higher the transmission power. For example, 96.3MHz is a higher number than the others (FYI, its Univision 96.3 FM (https://adafru.it/dBs)!) whereas 95.1 MHz is nice as low, that's not used for any transmission. Try to find a number that's also not surrounded by high numbers, since it can get 'drowned out' by the nearby frequencies. ©Adafruit Industries Page 15 of 26 Library Reference Radio Transmitter control Start out by initializing the Si4713 chipset with begin() This will return true if the radio initialized, and false if the radio was not found. Check your wiring if its not 'showing up' Then you can turn on the radio transmitter with setTXpower(txpwr) the txpwr number is the dBμV transmission power. You can set this to 88-115dBμV or 0 (for off) Of course, you'll want to tune the transmitter! Do that with tuneFM(freq) That will set the output frequency, in 10's of KHz. So if you want to tune to 101.9 the frequency value is 10190 You can check in on the radio with readTuneStatus() Whcih will set the currFreq currdBuV adnd currAntCap variables in the radio object. The first two are the frequency and power output, the third variable is the tuning antenna capacitor it set for the best output. This number will vary with antenna size and frequency. RPS (Radio Power Sensing) This function is used with two procedures. readTuneMeasure(freq) begins the measurement, freq is in units of 10KHz so 88.1MHz is written in as 8810 Then you have to call readTuneStatus() ©Adafruit Industries Page 16 of 26 which will wait until the chip has measured the data and stick it into the currNoiseLev el variable RDS/RBDS (Radio Data Broadcast) The Si4713 has great support for sending RDS data and we made it real easy too. Initialize the subsystem with beginRDS() Then you can set the "station name" with setRDSstation("AdaRadio") The radio station name is up to 8 characters You can also send the main buffer which usually contains the song name/artist. setRDSbuffer( "Adafruit g0th Radio!") You can send up to 32 characters, but you can continuously send new data, just wait a few seconds before each data rewrite so the listener's radio has received all the data GPIO Control There's two GPIO pins you can use to blink LEDs. They are GPIO1 and GPIO2 - GPIO3 is used for the oscillator. To set them to be outputs call setGPIOctrl(bitmask) where the bitmask has a 1 bit for each of the two pins. For example to set GPIO2 to be an output use setGPIOctrl((1