Here is what I do to figure out how tuners work...

http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Bus_Pirate http://www.saleae.com/ http://www.signalhound.com/

Using the I2C recorder of the Bus Pirate, I record (hack) the operational traffic on the Tuner's I2C Bus. This traffic is recorded during the operation of the Dongle when it is being initialized by the software that came with the Dongle. This reveals all the Initialization commands and operational commands of the tuner. It is always prudent to record this operational traffic when the tuner is operating on a PC with its included software so nothing is left for guessing. If the Bus Pirate not being fast enough, I use a SALEAE LOGIC 16 to record the I2C traffic.

After I characterize the I2C traffic, I use the Bus Pirate to exercise the tuner's I2C Bus and display its IF output with the SIGNALHOUND Tracing Generator/Spectrum Analyzer to test and qualify the accuracy of the tuner's commands. The Dongle's Init and Control SDR libraries are then possible to write.

I have used this technique to hack those Set Top Digital-to-Analog Set Top TV Converter Boxes of which millions are available (K-Mart). Those converter boxes have very good LNA/tuners in them unlike the Dongles.

I use a 96ksps, 24bit Audio Card on the set top box tuner's Zero IF output for a high quality receiver.

-----Original Message----- From: osmocom-sdr-bounces@lists.osmocom.org [mailto:osmocom-sdr-bounces@lists.osmocom.org] On Behalf Of Leif Asbrink Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2013 4:25 PM To: osmocom-sdr@lists.osmocom.org Subject: Re: MiricsFlexiTV-MSI3101

Hi All,

I have a USB dongle with a Mirics tuner which I have tried to get running with libmirisdr.

It seems the library is not complete and that it does not configure the chip correctly.

I can set a sampling rate and the get sampling rate returns the value that I have set, but the routine to actually set the rate is missing. The sampling rate always becomes 9.142 MHz.

As a test I have set the frequency to 500 MHz. The received frequencies are in the range 488.4 to 496.3 MHz. Something is very wrong with the data. If I inject a signal on 490.0 MHz I see four equally strong signals on 496.6, 498.8, 501.2 and 503.4. When the signal is moved towards the center frequency 492.35 MHz, the 498.8 and 501.2 signals move towards the center while the other two signals move towards the passband ends.

When looking at the narrowband spectrum of one signal I can see it is actually several equispaced carriers.

I have been told that the driver here works: http://blog.palosaari.fi/2013/08/mirics-msi3101-sdr-linux-driver.html Unfortunately I am not much of a programmer, I can not understand how to use the info: http://git.linuxtv.org/anttip/media_tree.git/shortlog/refs/heads/mirics

libmirisdr is easy to understand. Very similar to rtlsdr. It would be very interesting to be able to use this dongle and to check what performance one might get from it.

Regards

Leif

On Wed, 12 Jun 2013 20:58:22 +0200 marzano Francesco.Marzano@roma1.infn.it wrote:

A quite good (AM/SW)/FM/DAB/DVB-T USB dongle. Mirics FlexiTV MSi3101 (two chips MSi001+MSi2500) http://www.mirics.com http://www.mirics.com/node/31 Data sheets available, register yourself at Mirics portal. RF Tuner: MSi001/MSi002 ( used by FUNcubrePro+ ?), seems better than R820T ADC and HiSpeed USB interface: MSi2500 . ADC 10 bit , better than 8 bit RTL2832U aDC. Windows binary software available: FMDABplayer, DVB_T decoder, Windows lib.dll and API doc.

IO-DATA GV-TV100 stick sold on Japan . Stick, chips and dev board available from Mirics.

Linux software at address http://cgit.osmocom.org/libmirisdr/ It seems project on stand-by . Can author Steve Markgraf comment ?

Francesco

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