[PLUGIN] FM/DAB Radio - RTL-SDR

Restart you app, or use a browser

Hey @Gelo5,

Another option it to read from this post down which discussed work around mDNS failures.

Perhaps I will write a wiki page about it.

Kind Regards,

Ok, thanks

I finally received my dongle and installed the plugin yesterday. DAB+ reception is great, FM not so much (I did not search for the best spot to place the antenna anyway, so it’s fine for me).

The only thing I noticed: The MOT Slideshow does not show up on my display. I either get artwork looked up on the internet, or the default dab icon.

In my car, I do see the slideshow on the different stations. What could I do wrong here?

Thanks in advance, and keep up the excellent work :+1:

Hey @gfloener,

Welcome - glad DAB+ is working well for you.

MOT Slideshow is part of the DAB specification and your car does receive it - but that is because your car has a dedicated DAB chip with licensed decoding technology built in. Companies like Gracenote provide this to automotive manufacturers under enterprise licensing agreements.

How much does that cost? Gracenote charges streaming services around $5,000-7,500 per month with 5% annual increases and exclusivity requirements - you cannot combine their data with any other source. Automotive OEM licensing is custom negotiated per-vehicle, and car manufacturers pay significant fees for the privilege.

This is not available to open source projects. Our decoder (dab-cmdline) focuses on audio extraction. It does not decode MOT slideshow data.

What we do instead: parse the DLS text metadata that stations broadcast (artist/title information) and look up artwork via Last.fm. This works well for music but depends entirely on what text the station transmits. If a station only broadcasts its name with no track information, there is nothing to look up.

If you are getting the default DAB icon more often than expected, check your Artwork Confidence setting in plugin settings. Lower values (toward 0%) will attempt lookups on more ambiguous metadata - you may get more artwork but also more false matches. Higher values are stricter. Start around 60% and adjust based on results.

You are not doing anything wrong - this is a fundamental difference between consumer hardware with licensed proprietary decoders and open source software using SDR.

Kind Regards,

Thanks for the information. I get a good result with internet lookup, the default dab logo only shows up when I start listening to a station or when I switch a station. I can live with that :wink:

In the end, I misunderstood this part of a previous announcement:

"MOT Slideshow Support

fn-dab captures broadcast images (slide_*.jpg/png)
Album artwork sent by broadcaster displays directly
No internet lookup required when MOT is available"

I supposed that means full MOT Slideshow support, but thanks to your explanation, I understand that is not possible on this plattform. Good to know that you fixed this missing element by adding artwork from the internet!