Raspberry Pi as an FM Transmitter

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By Matt Richardson
Posted 2012/12/10 @ 8:00 am
Category General

This morning I was lazily browsing Reddit when I came across a project by the Imperial College Robotics Society in the UK. It’s code and instructions for using the Raspberry Pi as a low-power mono FM transmitter. When I saw how easy it looked to do, I ran over to my Pi, downloaded the code, and got it running within a matter of minutes (see video above). One of the best parts about this project is that you don’t need much hardware besides the Pi itself. Just connect a 20cm piece of wire to GPIO pin 40 to act as the antenna and then you’re all set. Click on over to their wiki if you’re interested in trying it yourself and how it works. [via Reddit]

In the Maker Shed

15 Responses to Raspberry Pi as an FM Transmitter

k4gdw on December 10th, 2012 at 8:29 am said:

Somehow I kinda doubt that this device has been type accepted for use as a transmitter by the FCC. I would seriously suggest one exercise extreme caution.

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- asdfg on December 17th, 2012 at 10:04 am said:
  
  Ah nevermind, add a 3g dongle to be able to dial in from anywhere and its the perfect low cost pirate radio transmitter. I know what my next project is!
  
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KeithP on December 10th, 2012 at 9:12 am said:

In the US the FCC allows unlicensed low power FM transmissions under Part 15 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The wifi/bluetooth/FM radio chip that Raspberry Pi uses passed FCC approval. So, as long as you don’t amplify your signal to broadcast more than 200 feet you should be fine.

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- Mike Field on December 10th, 2012 at 6:59 pm said:
  
  The power level which is legal is really small – 50 nanowatts Effective radiated power if you believe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_transmitter_(personal_device)
  
  A LVTTL signal can provide about 10mW into a correctly matched aerial – 200x the legal limit!
  
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kj4vyi on December 10th, 2012 at 10:18 am said:

dont forget depending on the freq you are transmitting on — depending on your country you may need a license

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Guy Giesbrecht on December 10th, 2012 at 12:26 pm said:

Hmmm… many android phones come with an fm receiver built in. This could be used as a low-bandwidth unidirectional link.

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Jason Evans on December 25th, 2012 at 9:43 am said:

Looking at the link that Matt provided, I wonder how difficult it would be to change the carrier to a standard unmodulated carrier wave, and use it as a morse code (aka cw for hams) transmitter. You would still need a separate receiver and you would need an small amplifier, unless you wanted to run really qrpp. This is a project that I’m excited about!

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iAppleGuy on January 17th, 2013 at 5:33 pm said:

Mine got an error: no module named PiFm.
I downloaded the linked file. Where do I save the file to?

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Dano on January 18th, 2013 at 12:47 pm said:

I have a need to use a (PI) to do VOIP to my two way radio. Has anyone done this using PBX or? and if so please tell me how. Also do we know what usb audio card works well with the PI? Thanks..

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