Spirit1, Spirit2 Real FM Radio General Thread

mikereidis · Sep 15, 2014

wyvernwaddell said:
HTC one max

But it is loading the module inside the kernel. https://github.com/CyanogenMod/andr.../cm-11.0/drivers/media/radio/radio-iris.c#L15

For future reference about this common radio-iris-transport problem, I copied my post from here: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=55472430&postcount=429

Re: FM drivers:

I see relevant commit messages here: https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_kernel_htc_msm8974/tree/cm-11.0/drivers/media/radio

radio: iris: fix smd init when iris-transport is not compiled as module

I'm guessing that this m8_defconfig file is not used: https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_kernel_htc_msm8974/blob/cm-11.0/arch/arm/configs/m8_defconfig

Because it specifies a module for radio-iris-transport. But it shows the important requirements without the committed fixes:

Code:

CONFIG_MODULES=y
CONFIG_RADIO_IRIS=y
CONFIG_RADIO_IRIS_TRANSPORT=m

wyvernwaddell · Sep 16, 2014

Spirit one and spirit 2 now can work with the htc one Max t6ul. Flyhalf205 built a test kernel tonight that let it work perfectly! Yay!! I'm expecting whatever he did to make it into the cm11 commits soon ( hopefully)!

KoscheiTheDeathless · Sep 16, 2014

I'm not crazy about the new update to Spirit xmit. It has to be force closed to turn off, for one, which I can't imagine is expected behavior. My main gripe is the turning off headphone output bit, though. I prefer the old way, as i like to just turn on xmit with earbuds in, then take them out and be at the exact same spot in the song. The fact that it kills earbud output without pausing means it's skipping part of the song.

Both are just minor niggles, and I can (and have) just go back to xmit 1, but I feel like it at least bears mentioning.

mikereidis · Sep 16, 2014

wyvernwaddell said:
Spirit one and spirit 2 now can work with the htc one Max t6ul. Flyhalf205 built a test kernel tonight that let it work perfectly! Yay!! I'm expecting whatever he did to make it into the cm11 commits soon ( hopefully)!

Good.

Those of us w/ HTC OneX's, OneS's, etc. would be happy to see FM work on CM kernels again.

mikereidis · Sep 16, 2014

KoscheiTheDeathless said:
I'm not crazy about the new update to Spirit xmit. It has to be force closed to turn off, for one, which I can't imagine is expected behavior.

No it's not. I'm not noticing this on my Z or Z1, both with stock rooted Kitkat.

What device and ROM/version ?

KoscheiTheDeathless said:
My main gripe is the turning off headphone output bit, though. I prefer the old way, as i like to just turn on xmit with earbuds in, then take them out and be at the exact same spot in the song. The fact that it kills earbud output without pausing means it's skipping part of the song.

Both are just minor niggles, and I can (and have) just go back to xmit 1, but I feel like it at least bears mentioning.

I'm always happy to get feedback. If it makes sense, I'll make things configurable.

I left wired headset audio on for version 1, for testing as much as anything. But some people have preferred it be off, and that worked better for me too, so the only audio would come from the receiver. Best transmit results come from maximised volume, and that can be annoying coming out of an earphone.

I'm not sure what you mean about taking the earbuds out; out of your ear or unplugging them ? And I don't understand why it would be skipping part of the song.

Kess78 · Sep 17, 2014

A little trick to increase the volume for Spirit transmit when it's already at the maximum : Go to Settings > Sound > Sound effect, and enable dynamic normaliser. All your songs will then have the same volume which is usually higher than the default maximum volume.

Is it possible that the PS shows the title of the song and the album ? Many car sysstems doesn't have RT and I don't find having just the song duration to be very usefull... Maybe it's not possible because you have to make it scrollable...

mikereidis · Sep 17, 2014

Kess78 said:
A little trick to increase the volume for Spirit transmit when it's already at the maximum : Go to Settings > Sound > Sound effect, and enable dynamic normaliser. All your songs will then have the same volume which is usually higher than the default maximum volume.

That's exactly what TV & Radio stations, and CD producers do as part of the "Loudness Wars".

So EQ is applied then... I haven't even tested that....

Kess78 said:
Is it possible that the PS shows the title of the song and the album ? Many car sysstems doesn't have RT and I don't find having just the song duration to be very usefull... Maybe it's not possible because you have to make it scrollable...

Anything is possible.

Here in North America, the most common use for PS is scrolled RT, although it's SUPPOSED to be non-distracting for car drivers according to the RBDS spec. My Prius only shows info when car is stopped.

The Qualcomm chip and the API even support scrolling, so it shouldn't be very hard.

But for now I'm back to Spirit2; there's a lot of work to do for Android L, which seems imminent.

mikereidis · Sep 17, 2014

Android L / 5.0 / LMP:

I've started the work on Spirit2 to deal with the imminent Android L release.

Access to the FM device and audio drivers will have to be done from a daemon process running with SU/root privilege.

The Spirit2 code was setup to do these things from the app process, using chmod to change device permissions. But this doesn't work with the more secure SELinux setup.

FM device daemon looks good, and will help me remove a few dead layers devoted to the now "old" (especially on Z2 and maybe Z3+) Sony/STE proposed Android FM API.

Audio, OTOH could be tricky. A daemon doesn't have easy access to Android APIs for sound output.

I'm considering a new approach that reads from the "microphone" as far as Android knows. (But under the cover is secretly switched to an FM input). This might actually help to resolve Google Now problems and GT-I9000 chipmunk issues.

mikereidis · Sep 17, 2014

Android One kernel source for the Mediatek devices is released and has a lot of code for various Mediatek chips. FM drivers for Mediatek are here: https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/msm/+/android-4.4.4_r3/drivers/misc/mediatek/fmradio/

I still have no plans at this time to support Mediatek, simply because I don't think it's an efficient use of my time; I might make literally a few extra sales and at the same time make millions of Chinese "non-customers" happy, and sending me 10+ times as many debug logs, LOL. And I'd need many devices and a few years to support properly anyway.

Then again, they might just run the Google FM app.

I haven't seen the Google FM app yet. It might work ONLY on the Android One Mediatek devices. It might be open sourced, or maybe it won't be, like GMail, Play, etc.

It's interesting because this would be the first Google Android FM app. But I think it will be limited to Android One in a few countries, just like SDCard, dual SIM and removable batteries.

Hmm, since an SDCard is needed to "download content" and since some people may not buy one, or may have limited space, it seems to me that the FM app would be even more important as a source of music.

Cookie Ninja · Sep 19, 2014

Seriously doubt Google making FM player on One devices open-source. These are mediatek based, has lot of hackability/better use potential by the industrious hacker community in India / Asia, which Google DOES NOT WANT!

Dead Cookies leave no trails...

mikereidis · Sep 19, 2014

Cookie Ninja said:
Seriously doubt Google making FM player on One devices open-source. These are mediatek based, has lot of hackability/better use potential by the industrious hacker community in India / Asia, which Google DOES NOT WANT!

Android isn't like many other open source projects. Google works on it secretly, then one day, unannounced until the last minute, they "throw it over the wall".

Except for "AOSP", it seems rare for Google to pre-announce whether or not they will release source code for things. I don't know if they have said if they will release "Android One", and same for Android Wear and Google Glass.

Kernel source is of course covered by GPL, so we know Google will release that. But we never know if Google might start using binary blobs, as NVidia has for PC Linux, without any court challenges.

So we don't know if "Google FM" will be closed source like other Google apps, or open like AOSP apps. It may even be a closed source Mediatek FM app, or at least derived from the Mediatek app.

I see various FM kernel drivers here: https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/mediatek/+/android-4.4.4_r3/drivers/misc/mediatek/fmradio/

I'll note that the now released Android One kernel with Mediatek drivers has code for many more chipsets than just the one used in Android One right now. Hopefully this is the start of new GPL co-operation from Mediatek. (Though I still have little incentive to support Mediatek.)

The current Google/Mediatek FM app may only have code for Mediatek chips at this time, and might even be tightly bound to their chips, just like the Qualcomm FM app we see on some CM ROMs now.

I couldn't find an Anbdroid One ROM dump anywhere yesterday. If anyone sees one, please let me know. I'm also interested in a video with a good look at the FM app. I don't want to waste a lot of time watching videos that may only have a brief glance.

mikereidis · Sep 20, 2014

Spirit2 0920 HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL Audio mods, in preparation for Android L: http://d-h.st/0z9

Also available via Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fm.a2d.s2 for those signed up as beta group members: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/fm.a2d.s2

May be glitchy on HTC OneXL, Xperia Z1 and ROMs I haven't tested with (mostly CM11). Xperia Z2 probably stock only.

The method to read digital audio data from the FM chip has a major change. 0912 and earlier use low level ALSA PCM functions to get the digitized audio.

This has problems when the Android audio system is not aware a digital input is being used, and eg Google Now hotword detection can cause problems. It also seems to be broken by the security likely in at least some Android L ROMs, if not all.

This new 0920 Hi-Xperimental release uses the standard Android APIs to read from the microphone input. Then Spirit sneaks underneath and switches the input from microphone to FM. This seems to be working pretty good, though some phones can have strange audio effects sometimes. Sometimes pressing Pause/Play or rebooting will fix.

Other positive effects, besides mic interference avoidance and Android L support may include:

- Reduction of audio glitching.
- Reduction of CPU/power usage.
- Faster audio switching.
- Less dependence on SU commands.

These mods alone won't guarantee Android L compatibility.

At a minimum the low level tuner code needs to become a root daemon and shed the shackles of the now clearly dead STEricsson ancient proposed and dead Android FM API on which Spirit2 was built. This will be much cleaner. faster and more efficient when done. I've prototyped it and might need a week to fix it up.

GuestK00114 · Sep 20, 2014

mikereidis said:
Spirit2 0920 HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL Audio mods, in preparation for Android L: http://d-h.st/0z9

...deleted...to keep quote neat ....

- Reduction of audio glitching.
- Reduction of CPU/power usage.
- Faster audio switching.
- Less dependence on SU commands.

These mods alone won't guarantee Android L compatibility.

At a minimum the low level tuner code needs to become a root daemon and shed the shackles of the now clearly dead STEricsson ancient proposed and dead Android FM API on which Spirit2 was built. This will be much cleaner. faster and more efficient when done. I've prototyped it and might need a week to fix it up.

Mike,
just downloaded, will test when Canada ist asleep but as for now, that Europe is awake, have to chop wood at first.

MrSteve555 · Sep 20, 2014

Hi Mike,
I'm trying to get native FM radio support on huashan CM11(Xperia SP), but after building, I can use the radio app, but there is absolutely no reception.
I can only get some crackling sounds, that get louder on certain frequencies.
I'm getting the same problem on Spirit 2 - I diagnosed this a bit and found out that the antenna "layout" is weird on Xperia SP. Internal uses headphone cord to recieve the FM waves, and I think the External uses the internal antenna. It's inverted and I have absolutely no idea how to fix it.
But here comes my real question:
Is there any way to switch the antennas with a command/BoardConfig flag/hack/anything? I'd love to get your app and native CM app to work

j1miroquai · Sep 20, 2014

Hi Mike.

I bought both your apps but unfortunately they don't work since I'm on Mahdi rom 4.4.4.
Of course its not your fault. I just have to ask. Is there any chance at all the app will work in the future on aosp roms? I own a lg g2 d802

GuestK00114 · Sep 20, 2014

My chainsaw is dull now...

fa-schmidt said:
Mike,
just downloaded, will test when Canada ist asleep but as for now, that Europe is awake, have to chop wood at first.

... but FM radio still works sharp as a razor's edge.

Tested the experimental release 2014/09/20 on my I9000 running CM11 nightly release as of 2014/09/19.

Volume control now works on lockscreen, yay!
Speaker mode works, volume is more than sufficient.

FM over bluetooth did not test.

I receive more FM channels than ever. The amount of station storage places is not enough as for todays reception possibilities!
I wonder if you did some magic on the tuner.

When receiving a call audio is properly muted and continues after call has ended.
This is not dependent on who ends the call.

When making a call its all the same.

When overriding FM with another app that needs audio, FM is properly muted but does not continue after app is closed.
You have to restart FM.

Please aks for any other checks i can do with my hardware. I would be glad if it helps.
Spirit is what it says :good:: Inspired.

mikereidis · Sep 20, 2014

j1miroquai said:
Hi Mike.

I bought both your apps but unfortunately they don't work since I'm on Mahdi rom 4.4.4.
Of course its not your fault. I just have to ask. Is there any chance at all the app will work in the future on aosp roms? I own a lg g2 d802

Hi, Thanks for your support.

Absolutely, I'm happily running the Vanir ROM with no problems on my Sprint LS980 variant of the LG G2.

At this point it's up to the Mahdi ROM dev(s) to decide if they want working FM support.

At one point, Spirit worked on Mahdi. Then he switched to a Nexus derived kernel to fix audio problems. Sadly the Nexus kernel audio driver did not have FM support.

I spent many hours developing a patch for the Mahdi kernel. It worked fine and I posted the patches and kernels here and on the Mahdi thread, with the hope the Mahdi dev would incorporate. It should take less than 5 minutes to do IMO.

But I guess he declined. There's nothing I can do about that; I can't force other people to do what I ask. And I can't get bogged down in creating and maintaining kernels on an ongoing basis. I have more than enough to do with my apps alone, with all the phones and ROMs I support, ongoing fixes, and major updates needed for Android L (and most Android releases really.)

I then found that the Vanir ROM already had the stuff needed in the audio driver for FM. So I've been happily running Vanir and all it's OTA updates. I don't use my G2 as a real phone so I have no idea how good it is as a "daily driver" ROM.

I'd recommend that you use kernels that have FM friendly audio drivers. I'm not sure which might at this time; I can only say Vanir works fine. CM11 used to work fine also, and may still do so, but I guess a lot of people didn't like that it required old bootloaders; I'm not sure if that is still true.

Beyond that, please feel free to "bug" kernel or ROM devs nicely for FM compatible audio drivers, more so perhaps if you've made any donations to their cause.

mikereidis · Sep 20, 2014

MrSteve555 said:
Hi Mike,
I'm trying to get native FM radio support on huashan CM11(Xperia SP), but after building, I can use the radio app, but there is absolutely no reception.
I can only get some crackling sounds, that get louder on certain frequencies.
I'm getting the same problem on Spirit 2 - I diagnosed this a bit and found out that the antenna "layout" is weird on Xperia SP. Internal uses headphone cord to recieve the FM waves, and I think the External uses the internal antenna. It's inverted and I have absolutely no idea how to fix it.
But here comes my real question:
Is there any way to switch the antennas with a command/BoardConfig flag/hack/anything? I'd love to get your app and native CM app to work

Spirit1 and Spirit2 both handle this automatically, as long as "ro.product.device" starts with (case independent) "C53", "M35" or "HAUSHAN" (for SP; there are others, see my C code at the end.)

Spirit1 can even be explicitly set, using Debug-> QCom Antenna.

Xperia SP requires "External". Most other Sony's require "Internal" and these are the ones that Spirit Transmit works on.

Pretty much all other Qualcomm chip based devices need "External", so the SP is more non-Sony "normal".

I have not found a single device that can use both; External or Internal refer to one of the two FM antenna pins on the chip, and in all cases I've seen, only one is connected to the wired headset, the other always seems to be grounded/disabled.

C code I use:

Code:

     if (! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.manufacturer"), "SONY", 4)) {
      if (! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "C2",    2) || ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "S39",     3) || ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "C19", 3) ||
          ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "C53",   3) || ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "M35",     3) || //! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "C19", 3) ||
          ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "NICKI", 5) || ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "TAOSHAN", 7) || ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "HUASHAN", 7)
        )
        v4l_antenna = 2;
      else
        v4l_antenna = 3;
    }

    if (v4l_antenna >= 2) {
      ret = chip_ctrl_set (V4L2_CID_PRIVATE_IRIS_ANTENNA, v4l_antenna - 2);                     // 0 = External/headset antenna for OneS/XL/Evo 4G/All others, 1 = internal for Xperia T - Z1
     logd ("chip_pwr_on PRIVATE_IRIS_ANTENNA ret: %d  v4l_antenna: %d", ret, v4l_antenna);
    }

MrSteve555 · Sep 20, 2014

mikereidis said:
Spirit1 and Spirit2 both handle this automatically, as long as "ro.product.device" starts with (case independent) "C53", "M35" or "HAUSHAN" (for SP; there are others, see my C code at the end.)

Spirit1 can even be explicitly set, using Debug-> QCom Antenna.

Xperia SP requires "External". Most other Sony's require "Internal" and these are the ones that Spirit Transmit works on.

Pretty much all other Qualcomm chip based devices need "External", so the SP is more non-Sony "normal".

I have not found a single device that can use both; External or Internal refer to one of the two FM antenna pins on the chip, and in all cases I've seen, only one is connected to the wired headset, the other always seems to be grounded/disabled.

C code I use:

Code:

if (! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.manufacturer"), "SONY", 4)) { if (! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "C2", 2) || ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "S39", 3) || ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "C19", 3) || ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "C53", 3) || ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "M35", 3) || //! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "C19", 3) || ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "NICKI", 5) || ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "TAOSHAN", 7) || ! strncasecmp (prop_get ("ro.product.device"), "HUASHAN", 7) ) v4l_antenna = 2; else v4l_antenna = 3; } if (v4l_antenna >= 2) { ret = chip_ctrl_set (V4L2_CID_PRIVATE_IRIS_ANTENNA, v4l_antenna - 2); // 0 = External/headset antenna for OneS/XL/Evo 4G/All others, 1 = internal for Xperia T - Z1 logd ("chip_pwr_on PRIVATE_IRIS_ANTENNA ret: %d v4l_antenna: %d", ret, v4l_antenna); }

Hmm,
Maybe it wasn't working from day 0 or something has changed recently, because right now External is the one that doesn't work, and Internal works perfectly fine.
And nice to know that actually the name External/Internal don't refer to headphones/no headphones. I'm a complete newbie into this, so forigve my lack of knowledge.

mikereidis · Sep 20, 2014

fa-schmidt said:
Mike,
just downloaded, will test when Canada ist asleep but as for now, that Europe is awake, have to chop wood at first.

I'm roughly on "Hawaii time", or up from about 19:00 - 11:00 GMT.

fa-schmidt said:
... but FM radio still works sharp as a razor's edge.

Tested the experimental release 2014/09/20 on my I9000 running CM11 nightly release as of 2014/09/19.

Volume control now works on lockscreen, yay!
Speaker mode works, volume is more than sufficient.

FM over bluetooth did not test.

I receive more FM channels than ever. The amount of station storage places is not enough as for todays reception possibilities!
I wonder if you did some magic on the tuner.

When receiving a call audio is properly muted and continues after call has ended.
This is not dependent on who ends the call.

When making a call its all the same.

When overriding FM with another app that needs audio, FM is properly muted but does not continue after app is closed.
You have to restart FM.

Please aks for any other checks i can do with my hardware. I would be glad if it helps.
Spirit is what it says :good:: Inspired.

Great ! I definitely appreciate testing around phone calls; this is one of the more common issues and I don't have the resources to buy 20 SIMs and do a lot of phone call testing myself.

An issue to watch for on GT-I9000 is the "chipmunk" problem, where audio frequencies are doubled. This happens after an app (including Google Now) uses the microphone in mono mode. The audio driver gets stuck in mono and can't be switched back to stereo. A few people report that they ALWAYS get audio frequency doubling, even after a fresh boot. I think they must have some app that starts the microphone, even if only briefly at startup. Google Now hotword detection needs to be disabled lately to avoid this.

I'm actually pleasantly surprised that I got GT-I9000 working as well as I did. I was almost sure I'd have to leave it behind for Android L, due to the mono only microphone issue. (But I'm not sure CM12 or any L ROM will ever be built or work well on such a "classic" phone.)

I rarely touch tuner code any more and haven't done so for the Silicon Labs tuner lately. Sometime people say reception got better, or worse, and I just say that nothing was changed. Sometimes people mistake audio quality issues for tuner reception issues.

BUT, I did recently amplify the sound volume for GT-I9000, so maybe that's what you are noticing.

When a "temporary loss of audio focus" happens, such as for an audio notification, Android audio apps are supposed to pause and restart audio, or lower and re-raise volume.

When a "permanent loss of audio focus" happens, such as when a music app starts, Android audio apps are supposed to stop "semi-permanently", which means permanently, unless the user restarts it of course.

Spirit follows these rules for Android audio apps. Of course FM radio has the added issue of the running tuner. I COULD make Spirit continue to run the tuner with audio paused until explicitly turned off.

But all other stock and non-stock FM radio apps turn the tuner off completely in this scenario, so Spirit does the same. Most people want FM turned off completely when starting another music app. It's easy enough to restart for those who want that.

Spirit1, Spirit2 Real FM Radio General Thread

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