If a script appears to break, please contact me (email address at foot of page) and I will investigate why.
Please sign the petition against FM Switch Off - http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AM-FM-Radio/ - the plans to turn off FM are bonkers, there is no real demand for DAB, its inferior audio quality to FM, and the pile of scrap radios will be huge. The costs of converting your car radio will be high; the DAB industry representatives talk of "professionally installed"; that means new aerials as well as a new radio, not cheap !
I am a regular radio listener; mostly BBC Radio 2, 3 and 4. Because of the large amount of listen-again material, I bought a Logik IR-100 Internet Radio which uses the Reciva website.
The service is pretty good, though sorting the wheat from chaff can be hard work. To that end, RadioFeeds offers a way out for live feeds; separating the "decent" UK and Ireland services from the noddy stations. For the rest of the planet, you have to just experiment; there are some gems of stations out there, with superb audio quality.
Back at UK output, there is scope for all sorts of improvements;
Hence this page of various scripts, tricks and ideas to improve things. Many are just a matter of pasting my script URLs into the radio's control interface (Reciva website for their radios).
NOTE new URLs December 2008, compulsory from February 2009 !!!
If you have the old URLs which were on fleetwith.co.uk, then from February 2009 they will stop working. You need to change them to the dabdig.co.uk URLs below as part of a migration off this website.
In Our Time, In Business and Material World have approaching 500 programmes (total) in the archive. To use these on your Reciva Radio, use the URLs below in the "My Podcasts" feature on the Reciva website:
The software which runs these archives is moving, it is being taken over by Paul Webster, and the new URLs are shown below. Please update your radio to the new URLs. Updates of the programme listings on this site are unlikely, and eventually the old URLs on this site will be removed.
In Our Time - everything :
http://www.dabdig.co.uk/radiorss/radioarchive.php
Alternatively, In Our Time can be split by category; science, philosophy,
religion, history, culture. Use this syntax for a split:
http://www.dabdig.co.uk/radiorss/radioarchive.php?category=history
http://www.dabdig.co.uk/radiorss/radioarchive.php?category=science
http://www.dabdig.co.uk/radiorss/radioarchive.php?category=philosophy
http://www.dabdig.co.uk/radiorss/radioarchive.php?category=culture
http://www.dabdig.co.uk/radiorss/radioarchive.php?category=religion
In Business - no categories for this one yet, just date order:
http://www.dabdig.co.uk/radiorss/radioarchive.php?series=inbusiness
Material World - no categories, date order:
http://www.dabdig.co.uk/radiorss/radioarchive.php?series=materialworld
Frontiers - no categories, date order:
http://www.dabdig.co.uk/radiorss/radioarchive.php?series=frontiers
Food Programme - no categories, date order:
http://www.dabdig.co.uk/radiorss/radioarchive.php?series=foodprogramme
Copy and paste the above URLs of your choice into the "my podcasts" area on the Reciva website, and your radio should pick up the programmes.
Known Bugs - some of the older programmes from In Our Time appear to fail to play in an IR-100. One possible reason is that it may be an older version of the Real-Audio encoder used to make these programmes, and somehow incompatible with that in the IR-100? Another might be the bit rate of the stream which appears to be different to those used later, this might reflect BBC staff learning to use the new encoders ? It doesn't quiet explain why the very first few programmes are fine.
Unable to load Podcast, Error 1048 - No idea why Reciva radios sometimes show this error. If it persists, I've found that going to the Reciva portal and re-creating the podcast entry (new podcast name, same URL) is the solution.
How the scripts work - The current version works with PHP script to write the XML, using a text file which contains the programme unique name (which is an eight digit number, representing the date of transmission) and the title string. The text files are produced by a Perl screen-scraping script to update the text files from the BBC website pages. The updating of the text files only runs when I trigger it, but I will move it to automatic in due course. Before it goes automatic, need to add a few "safety valves" against the BBC changing their webpages and thus my screen-scraper would fail.
A fellow Reciva portal user had problems accessing the podcasts of a Swiss broadcaster: http://digitalk.kaywa.ch/. The problem was the podcast URL http://digitalk.kaywa.ch/rss2/podcasts/ delivered links to "m4a" files which don't have the correct codec to playback on his radio. Fortunately the broadcaster also puts "mp3" files in the same directory. So, using SimplePie, I was able to read the podcast file, do a couple of simple substitutions (file extension and mime type) and re-write the output. The code and URL for the transposed XML is available on request.
A similar problem existed for the French station Europe1. In this case, the audio URL in the podcast was a reference to a stat-counter URL, with the audio file URL as a query component. The Radio seemed unable to cope with this. So, another quick SimplePie PHP script extracted the audio URL and re-wrote the Podcast XML file. Again, files available on request, email address at bottom of page.
Similarly, the "Naked Scientists" podcasts seem to fail because of an occaisional erroneous ampersand character in titles. So, just loading up their "podcast URL" into "My Podcasts" means I could only see about 6 shows, whereas there are really over a hundred. In addition, the choice of starting all their podcast titles as "Naked Scientists ....." means that separating one from another on the Reciva radio display is difficult. Again, a few minutes work to re-write the XML, changing the titles of the shows so that they work better on a Reciva radio.
I've put together a page outlining how to re-write XML Podcast files using SimplePie. If you use the method I outline, I'd appreciate being told about it.
My radio is a Logik IR-100, which is sold in the UK by the Dixons group (Dixons,
Curry's, PC World). I paid £40, which I think fair as the units have
a number of shortcomings; hum from the transformer, weak WiFi reception, lack
of firmware updates since 2006, etc (Jan 30th 2008, new firmware for IR-100
released, fixing many issues and upgrading radios to same firmware as that
tested via Sharpfin methods). These can be overcome by the owner prepared
to take the back off and also fiddle with the firmware; both actions will
probably invalidate any guarantees.I don't think the "full" price
of £80 or £100 is reasonable given the faults in the implementation
of the design. There is now an alternative "IR-100" from the brand
IPDio; appears to be the same case and internal bits, though with improved
WiFi, (probably improved transformer) and current (Nov 2007) firmware. I have
that firmware version on my IR-100 using the Sharpfin methods (link below).
I have now (Jan 2008) done the hardware modifications to the IR-100. These
get rid of the annoying transformer hum through the speaker, and improve the
WiFi reception a little.
Firstly, I got a cheap 4-port USB hub from 7-day-shop.
With the back removed, the hub almost fits against the LH (viewed from front)
edge of the radio, with three ports facing up and one facing the back. 5 minutes
gentle carving with a chisel to remove a few mm of plastic from the corner
of the USB hub's case and it does fit !
The WiFi board is removed from the main module, and plugged into the hub.
With the back refitted, the "legs" on the back trap the top of the
WiFi board against the LH case side.
Next to the "back rotation". Anyone looking at an IR-100 will see
the rear moulding reflex port should fit onto the speaker. Having moved the
WiFi aerial, the back can be rotated. I had to remove a wooden block from
the middle of the back (gentle work with chisel), and the back is now only
fixed with four screws. I have an option of cutting a hole in the back to
access one of the USB ports on the hub, but I have not done this yet(must
investigate whether the "demo" mode to access a USB stick is difficult
to enable, the Sharpfin site may have information).
Net result is no hum (WOW!!), and the WiFi now works in a room where it was
previously did not. Not a massive improvement in the WiFi, but small and useful.
I would caution any potential purchaser of an Internet Radio to check carefully which services their potential purchase can receive; there are a lot of audio formats and internet radio broadcast methods, and I'm not aware of any device which supports all of them. Also check the attitude of the supplier to updating the product. Some quite well known brands, charging middle-high prices, are dreadfully behind firmware updates, which means their products don't support features other makers have as standard.
Its my view that £150+ devices are not good value; one can get a general purpose portable computing device for that sort of money which supports far more audio formats and is far more likely to be kept up to date (eg. Apple iTouch, small solid state laptop, etc.).
Paul Webster's Reciva stuff - http://www.dabdig.co.uk/
Bill's IR-100 resource page - http://logikir100.tripod.com/Logik.htm
Sharpfin project to explore and update the inner workings of Reciva radios - http://sharpfin.zevv.nl/index.php/Main_Page
Reciva official website - http://www.reciva.com/
2blu parsed BBC Listen Again (possibly broken, July 2008 due to changes from "radioplayer" to "iplayer" at the BBC) - http://2blu.co.uk/
iPlayer Converter ; re-mapping the BBC iPlayer listings to work with Real Audio - http://www.iplayerconverter.co.uk
Last Update - 10th February 2009