pyFMRadio Is Now Fully Compatible With Nokia N900!!

It is not secret that N900’s software isn’t complete and there are couple of missing features and few rough spots where the developers haven't completely finished their work but from other hand operating systems are always a work in progress and the work is never done to improve them!

Nokia also belief that product like Maemo is ideally suited for open source model and is hoping it will manage to attract hobby developers and large open source community around Linux, which will help it grow and mature into the leading solution for building rich and user friendly mobile applications.

Anyway, a common complaint about the current Maemo 5 platform is that it lacks some of the basic features such as MMS support, lprofile s support, portrait mode and especially fact that it will not be shipped with a built-in FM-radio application although device is capable of receiving an FM-radio signal.

Fortunately, Maemo development scene is active and creative and it seems that we’ll get the FM radio functionality sooner than expected although developing a simple Fm receiver controlling application is not as easy as you would imagine it would be!

Martin Grimme from Python and more blog has managed to successfully receive FM radio on his Nokia N900 but he is facing numerous problems with huge battery drain and to make it even worse, according to Martin there is no safe way to fix that.

The main problem is that hardware is disabled by default for power saving reasons and it also requires bluetooth and the I2C communication to be powered up, and only then, the FM radio driver will actually load.

Another tricky part is getting to hear sound from the radio. Unlike the N800, the FM radio doesn't output to the speakers directly so it is necessary to capture the sound streaming from the PGA line and play it back.

If you are interesting in testing and or improving this Python based application you can find more about at the project page and the developer’s blog.