Hello My name Is Ryan Standeven and I need to find some help with making a PCB for a USB AM/FM Radio tuner I have no experience making a hardware component for a computer but have a little bit of experience in making other electronics. I was wondering if any one here would know of a good site or a book that could tell me a few things about how I could make a USB AM/FM Radio. I actually want to try and make an AM/FM radio tuner for the Xbox... but I know that as the development on Xbox software is in it's current state... It's next to impossible for one to create a driver for it and the only way I could make it accessible is if I got it to treat the radio tuner as one of the other components it can read such as a memory card or controller with a mic plugged in. I'm not too enthusiastic about doing it the second way so I figure i should just try and make one for the PC before i try anything too fancy. OpenXDK will hopefully be mature enough by then. And if this first project turns out well.. and maybe even if it doesn't... I'm going to try and make a USB RF input so you can connect Cable, Satelite and anything else that has an RF output... of course coding the software will be challening ... but i can't even think about making the software until I know how to build the hardware. and again... all I need is someone to point me in the right direction Thank you ~Ryan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.opencores.org/forums.cgi/usb/attachments/20051114/c4bc161d/attachment.html

HI Ryan, This is an interesting project, but pretty tuff for a person without any computer hardware background. For a radio, you need different blocks, the first one is your radio receiver. The you need a A/D converter with some buffer, a microcontroller and then the USB interface. The last 2 blocks are easy, you can use one of the development boards from Cypress, PIC or any other company that supports USB, you maybe able to use the internal A/D of some of the microcontrollers on those ICs.The radio part is the difficult one (in my opinion), you need good layout knowledge to make a working radio or maybe you can find a radio module to put on your board. For schematic capture and PCB, I would suggest Eagle (http://wwwcatsoftusa.com) it is free to not-for-profit use and it is pretty powerfull and has a lot of features. For commersial it is cheap enough for a small project like yours. But does not have any kind of simulator or signal integrity tools that may be necessary for a project like the one you have in mind. So, the fastest way to develop your idea is to purchase the ez-USB development board from Cypress, or www.silabs.com, and connect it to a radio, design your SW while you are working on your radio design. Here are a few links to begin with: http://www.silabs.com/tgwWebApp/public/web_content/products/Microcontrollers/USB/en/USBMCU_matrix.htm http://www.cypress.com/portal/server.pt?space=CommunityPage&control=SetCommunity&CommunityID=209&PageID=215&gid=9&fid=10&category=All&showall=false http://www.microchip.com/ParamChartSearch/chart.aspx?branchID=111&mid=10&lang=en&pageId=74 Good luck, Best regards, /Farhad "Ryan S." ryan.pdg1 at gmail.com> wrote: Hello My name Is Ryan Standeven and I need to find some help with making a PCB for a USB AM/FM Radio tuner I have no experience making a hardware component for a computer but have a little bit of experience in making other electronics. I was wondering if any one here would know of a good site or a book that could tell me a few things about how I could make a USB AM/FM Radio. I actually want to try and make an AM/FM radio tuner for the Xbox... but I know that as the development on Xbox software is in it's current state... It's next to impossible for one to create a driver for it and the only way I could make it accessible is if I got it to treat the radio tuner as one of the other components it can read such as a memory card or controller with a mic plugged in. I'm not too enthusiastic about doing it the second way so I figure i should just try and make one for the PC before i try anything too fancy. OpenXDK will hopefully be mature enough by then. And if this first project turns out well.. and maybe even if it doesn't... I'm going to try and make a USB RF input so you can connect Cable, Satelite and anything else that has an RF output... of course coding the software will be challening ... but i can't even think about making the software until I know how to build the hardware. and again... all I need is someone to point me in the right direction Thank you ~Ryan _______________________________________________ http://www.opencores.org/mailman/listinfo/usb --------------------------------- Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.opencores.org/forums.cgi/usb/attachments/20051115/d9ce4849/attachment.html