NAME

fmio — small utility to manipulate fm radio card

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The fmio is a small program to set and change fm radio card parameters.

It sets frequency, volume of a card, reports signal strength on the working frequency and can set a radio card output to mono provided that the card driver supports it.

The fmio has two additional modes - scanning and detection. In the scan mode fmio scans frequency range with step 10 kHz and outputs measured signal strength. Frequency range and number of probes for each frequency are configurable. In the detection mode fmio detects any supported radio card. Use this mode if you are not sure which card you have or do not know which port your card uses.

Also, it can control the output volume of a sound card through /dev/mixer.

The options are as follows:

-d driver

Use driver driver. See list of currently known drivers in section DRIVERS. If no driver was specified, default one will be used.

-f freq

Set fm card frequency (in MHz).

-i

Show all available information about a driver and a card.

-m

Set output of a card to mono. Works only in conjunction with option -f. Note, that not all drivers support this option.

-s

Show current signal status of a radio card.

-v volume

Set volume of a card. Option -v 0 will mute a card. Each driver has its own maximal volume.

-x volume

Set volume of an arbitrary mixer line of a sound card thru /dev/mixer. The volume has following format:

<line name>=[+-]<left channel>,[+-]<right channel>.

For the line names see

under OpenBSD and NetBSD: /usr/include/sys/audioio.h

under Linux and FreeBSD: /usr/include/sys/soundcard.h

Some examples of the option -x usage are in the section EXAMPLES below.

-X volume

Set volume of the sound card master output through /dev/mixer. Format of this option is similar to option -x, except there is no need to specify <line name>.

-D

Detection mode. All known cards will be probed and results will be printed to standard output. Note, this procedure is very slow.

-S

Scan mode. If some of the listed below parameters were not specified the FM maximal and minimal frequencies are used. Measured data is dumped to standard output.

-l begin

Lower border of scan range (in MHz). If it is less than the FM minimal frequency (87.5 MHz), it is set to the FM minimal frequency.

-h end

Upper border of scan range (in MHz). If it is greater than the FM maximal frequency (108.0 MHz), it is set to the FM maximal frequency.

-c count

Number of probes for each frequency. The higher this number is the more precise will be results. Since stereo signal has weight 3, none - weight 0 and mono is in between, the strongest signal will have value 3 * count. If not set, each frequency will be probed only once.

-W frequency

Search mode. Nearest to frequency station is searched and, if found, tuned to. The search direction is determined by frequency sign. If frequency has negative value, the station is searched downward. If frequency is positive the search is performed upward.

DRIVERS

Aztech/PackardBell FM Radio Card (ISA) ‘az’

Brooktree Bt848 Driver ‘bktr’

BMC FM Radio Card (ISA) ‘bmc’

BSD Radio Driver ‘br’

EcoRadio Card (ISA) ‘er’

Gemtek FM Radio Card (ISA) ‘gti’

Gemtek FM Radio Card (PCI) ‘gtp’

AIMS Lab Highway Xtreme TV card with FM tuner Driver ‘hx’

Guillemot MaxiRadio FM 2000 Radio Card (PCI) ‘mr’

AIMS Lab RadioTrack/RadioReveal RA300 FM Radio Card (ISA) ‘rt’

AIMS Lab RadioTrack II FM Radio Card (ISA) ‘rtII’

SoundForte Awesome 64R SF64-PCE2 Driver (PCI) ‘sae’

SoundForte Legacy 128 SF16-FMD2 Driver (ISA) ‘sf2d’

SoundForte RadioX SF16-FMI Driver (ISAPNP) ‘sfi’

SoundForte RadioLink SF16-FMR FM Radio Card (ISA) ‘sfr’

SoundForte RadioLink SF16-FMR2 FM Radio Card (ISA) ‘sf2r’

SoundForte RadioLink SF64-PCR FM Radio Card (PCI) ‘sf4r’

Spase PCRadio Card (ISA) ‘sp’

SoundForte Quad X-treme SF256-PCP-R Driver (PCI) ‘sqx’

SoundForte Theatre X-treme 5.1 SF256-PCS-R Driver (PCI) ‘stx’

Sound Vision 16 Gold Sound Card with FM Radio (ISA) ‘svg’

Trust FM Radio Card (ISA) ‘tr’

Terratec FM Radio Card (ISAPNP) ‘tt’

Video4Linux Driver ‘v4l’

Zoltrix RadioPlus 108 FM Radio Card (ISA) ‘zx’

EXAMPLES

• Set frequency to 104.5 MHz:

  # fmio -f 104.5

• Set frequency to 104.5 MHz and show signal state on this frequency:

  # fmio -f 104.5 -s

• Set frequency to 104.5 MHz, hardware volume to 4:

  # fmio -v 4 -f 104.5

• Set volume of both channels of line input to 9:

  # fmio -x line=9

• For line1, increase volume of left channel by 2, set volume of right channel to 10:

  # fmio -x line1=+2,10

• For master output, increase volume of left channel by 2 and decrease volume of right channel by 1:

  # fmio -X +2,-1

• Decrease volume of both channels by 2:

  # fmio -X -2

• Scan range [100.0...107.6] using driver ‘bktr’:

  # fmio -d bktr -S -l 100.0 -h 107.6

• Search station below 104.3 MHz using driver ‘sf2r’:

  # fmio -d sf2r -W -104.3

• Detect all available cards:

  # fmio -D

FILES

/dev/mixer

mixer audio device

/dev/tuner

radio tuner device used by the BSD bktr driver.

/dev/radio

radio tuner device used by ‘v4l’ driver (Linux) and ‘br’ driver (OpenBSD and NetBSD)

ENVIROMENT

The following environment variables affect the execution of fmio:

FMTUNER

The driver that should be used as default.

RADIODEVICE

The radio tuner device (OpenBSD, NetBSD and Linux).

MIXERDEVICE

The audio mixer device to use.

BUGS

Frequency and hardware volume should be absolute. They cannot be increased or decreased relatively to the current value.

The Gemtek PCI card implementation has some flaw. Namely, when turning a card off, don't use option -f.

The SF16-FMR card has 16 volume levels. Thus, fmio -f 104.5 can be easily taken in as fmio -v 0. Use some volume level when setting up a frequency. Also, this card has to be initialized during bootup. Launch fmrinit from some start script (most likely /etc/rc.local).

There's a flaw in the BSD bktr driver - after closing /dev/tuner a card is turned off too. Thus, you cannot use fmio alone to manage bktr cards because fmio opens /dev/tuner, tunes a card to some frequency and closes /dev/tuner - and a card is turned off. Since fmio cannot hold /dev/tuner open all the time, use it with bktrctl. The same concerns Linux users. Some cards supported by kernel are turned off after closing /dev/radio (e.g. USB tuners). Use fmio with bktrctl.

Due to the above limitation the BSD bktr driver cannot work correctly if frequency was not specified. E.g. fmio -d bktr -i will not work as expected. Correct use is fmio -d bktr -f <some freq> -i.

AUTHOR

Vladimir Popov ⟨jumbo@narod.ru⟩