Re: [PATCH 0/3] FM Transmitter driver

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On Thursday 02 April 2009 14:02:11 Eduardo Valentin wrote:
> Hi Hans,
> 
> On Thu, Apr 02, 2009 at 09:47:11AM +0200, ext Hans Verkuil wrote:
> > On Wednesday 01 April 2009 11:43:28 Eduardo Valentin wrote:
> > > Hello Mauro and v4l guys,
> > >
> > > This series contains a v4l2 radio driver which
> > > adds support for Silabs si4713 devices. That is
> > > a FM transmitter device.
> > >
> > > As you should know, v4l2 does not contain representation
> > > of FM Transmitters (at least that I know). So this driver
> > > was written highly based on FM receivers API, which can
> > > cover most of basic functionality. However, as expected,
> > > there are some properties which were not covered.
> > > For those properties, sysfs nodes were added in order
> > > to get user interactions.
> > >
> > > Comments are wellcome.
> > 
> > Can you explain in reasonable detail the extra properties needed for a 
> > device like this? You will need to document that anyway :-) Rather than 
> > implementing a private API it would be much more interesting to turn this 
> > into a public V4L2 API that everyone can use.
> 
> Yes, here is a little description of them:
> 
> Pilot is an audible tone sent by the device.
> 
> pilot_frequency - Configures the frequency of the stereo pilot tone.
> pilot_deviation - Configures pilot tone frequency deviation level.
> pilot_enabled - Enables or disables the pilot tone feature.
> 
> The si4713 device is capable of applying audio compression to the transmitted signal.
> 
> acomp_enabled - Enables or disables the audio dynamic range control feature.
> acomp_gain - Sets the gain for audio dynamic range control.
> acomp_threshold - Sets the threshold level for audio dynamic range control.
> acomp_attack_time - Sets the attack time for audio dynamic range control.
> acomp_release_time - Sets the release time for audio dynamic range control.
> 
> Limiter setups audio deviation limiter feature. Once a over deviation occurs,
> it is possible to adjust the front-end gain of the audio input and always
> prevent over deviation.
> 
> limiter_enabled - Enables or disables the limiter feature.
> limiter_deviation - Configures audio frequency deviation level.
> limiter_release_time - Sets the limiter release time.
> 
> power_level - Sets the output power level for signal transmission.

Hmm, there are two ways to implement these: either make a bunch of VIDIOC's
for each of these categories, or use extended controls to set all these
values. I'm hardly an expert on FM transmitters, but it all seems reasonable
to me (i.e., not too specific for this chip).

I am leaning towards extended controls, since that's so easy to extend if
needed in the future. And I still intend to add sysfs support to controls
in the future. On the other hand, it's a bit harder to use compared to normal
VIDIOCs.

> 
> RDS related
> 
> rds_enabled - Enables or disables the RDS feature.
> rds_ps_name - Sets the RDS ps name field for transmission.
> rds_radio_text - Sets the RDS radio text for transmission.
> rds_pi - Sets the RDS PI field for transmission.
> rds_pty - Sets the RDS PTY field for transmission.

So you set the fields and the RDS encoder will just start using them?

This too can be done with controls (needs some work, though, to support
string controls).

> 
> Region related
> 
> Setting region will affect other region properties.
> 
> region_bottom_frequency
> region_channel_spacing
> region_preemphasis
> region_top_frequency

I do not know enough about FM transmissions to judge this. Are these region
properties something that is regulated by some standards commision? Do they
also apply when you modulate this over a TV/radio cable system? Do you have
some documentation or links that I can look at to learn more about this?

> stereo_enabled - Enables or disables stereo mode.
> 
> > 
> > How does one pass the audio and rds data to the driver? Note that for 2.6.31 
> > we will finalize the V4L2 RDS decoder API (I recently posted an RFC for 
> > that, but I haven't had the time to implement the few changes needed). It 
> > would be nice if rds modulator support would be modeled after this 
> > demodulator API if possible.
> 
> I see. This is good. I think the best way is to have a rds modulator
> interface. This driver have implemented it as sys properties, as
> described above.

I don't think there is that much overlap, though. The similarities are
probably limited to some flags.

> 
> > 
> > Does region information really belong in the driver? Perhaps this should be 
> > in a user-space library? (just a suggestion, I'm not sure at this stage).
> 
> Ok. Yes, this could be better to implement in user land. However,
> depending on region that would restrict other properties as well.
> So, letting user space control that, would allow device operate in wrong
> intervals for frequencies for instance.

But if you are in region A and you setup the device for region B, then it's
wrong as well, right?

I also wonder if there are legal requirements that have to be followed here?

Regards,

	Hans

-- 
Hans Verkuil - video4linux developer - sponsored by TANDBERG
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