[SSDN] Would this Really Be Homebrew?

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SolderSmoke Daily News

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Would this Really Be Homebrew?

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 06:52 AM PDT
http://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2022/07/would-this-really-be-homebrew.html


Hack-A-Day has an interesting post about an FM Broadcast radio project. I
took a look. The Github page has the schematics for the hardware. For me,
the thing is, there is just not a lot there. It is a bunch of chips. The
FM Tuner IC is the heart of the project. With that one you have to dig
down to see that it is a digital processing chip:
https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/RF-Transceiver-ICs_RDA-Microelectronics-RDA5807MP_C167245.html
All of the action -- all of the magic of radio -- is locked inside those
little SMD chips. I suppose if you were skilled enough to write the
software or to significantly modify it, you'd get closer to the experience
of homebrew radio, but very few of us have those kinds of skills -- we
just download the software, then struggle to get it into the chips.
And sure, you could struggle to solder those chips to a PC board, but
really, why bother when 99% of the components are already inside the
chips? You should just buy a board with the chips on them and with the
software already loaded. There you have it: the store-bought appliance is
really, really close to the supposedly homebrew receiver.
But hey, to each his own. This is a hobby and it is all for fun. I just
think I have more fun with old-style, analog, discrete component HDRs.
YMMV.