Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alex, who writes:
Thomas,
I am Alex and a reader of SWLing for quite a while, particularly in
terms of reviews and tests, very helpful and I appreciate your work.
As a listener myself enjoying my Tecsun PL-680 among others, I have
also created a website that looks like a radio, turning your spare
device into a radio, giving one similar experience to shortwave
radios, particularly in the aspect of operation and in the serendipity
of discovery new stations.
I figured I’d share it with you an would love to hear your thoughts.
This is something I enjoy using, not making any money from it and the
main purpose is the enjoyment I get, hoping others feel the same.
You can check it out at radioside.com
Sincerely,
Alex Dragusin
I think this is brilliant! Thank you for sharing–I love the auto-resizing SW portable interface! Very nice I’m bookmarking this right now. Thanks again, Alex.
Dear Alex,
Congrats for your great work! I love the idea (to be honest, I had a similar one, but never found time and knowledge to make it happen). I would love to contribute to the radio station list that are available in my country (I’ve seen there are some broken links and lacking stations). How can I do that?
I also have some ideas to make the website work faster, but I know that it’s a non-profit hobby website, so I am in no position to demand any changes 🙂
I hope that it will be developed, I’ll definately use it in my spare phone that I made into my online radio receiver!
Cannot find stations in my area (Cleveland, OH) that I know have an internet presence.
I assume the search mode is searching a local database and not the internet.
Why not search the Internet?
Yes, I agree that a table of stations/index numbers would be nice.
And… your concept is a very nice implementation of a radio utility!
Thank you Alex. Very kind and thoughtful of you. I wouldn’t be too concerned about people who are getting something for free and whine because it’s not more to their liking and demand you to put in more work and time into the project. Peace and joy to you and again thank you for all your time and effort.
Bill K
You are welcome Bill and I also welcome the feedback which in all fairness, it’s been rather useful and allowed me to sort out some of the issues.
Really enjoyed designing and implementing it, have fun using it 🙂
Thank you Alex. Very kind and thoughtful of you. I wouldn’t be too concerned about people who are getting something for free and whine because it’s not more to their liking and demand you to put in more work and time into the project. Peace and joy to you and again thank you for all your time and effort.
Bill
Well done Alex.
I really like how you proposed web radios.
At least you kept the semblance of a radio alive.
The ubiquity of the Internet is indeed a dangerous enemy for shortwave transmissions.
Everyone here has probably seen the website : radio.garden
How long will shortwave transmissions last?
Oh cool! One of the four Indonesian stations on our network is in the directory already (Radio Seribatu).
I will get our other stations submitted to the database, it’s kind of weird only one station in our network is already there – I guess due to a keen listener submitting it previously.
Looks great – but will there be ads?
No plan to have ads on RadioSide nor interfere with the radio programming (like adding ads before playing or other shenanigans etc), the streams are loaded as is with no interference from me. When the time comes, I rather make less money than provide a shitty exprience to the listeners. However I am not in control of the radio stations themselves, so their ads are their business.
Free for listeners. I will add options for people who want to voluntarily support the project (like Patreon or something) and the virtual frequency allocations are available to be bought by broadcasters (like the way we buy domain names), the details on that are still being worked on.
These options should provide enough funding to keep things going in the long term. No rush even though it got more popular than expected haha! It seems to bring joy to the listeners so that’s already great!
Already replied to this but seems it didn’t go through, I have no intention to put ads on the site, RadioSide will be free for the listeners, some of the radio stations have their own ads as part of their programming, of course, I don’t have control over that.
That’s great to hear! Good luck with the project, it seems really nice.
Nice,
I’m using firefox and there is a strong glitch noise when I “tune” from station to station.
Just an observation note. I have the latest Firefox v123.0 here (100% Firefox here) and haven’t observed any noise when tuning Station to Station.
I posted about this on several Forums and folks were excited and gave it whirl…
Good news, I have implemented the search function as the KTM (Keyword Tuning Mode).
Basically you search for some keywords and the results are added into this cute list, which you can tune back and forth within the list (or arbitrarily select a station from the dropdown).
Have fun!
Excellent. My short video of your program was of interest to many of my subscribers. Here is a link: https://youtu.be/WbQN54sHSvo?si=btpf-sa-8cRjVUvi
Will need to do an updated video show the new scan mode which is very valuable.
Tom
Where does the database come from? I tried to find CR1 in China and found a lot of China stations but the description was mostly in Chinese.
Thanks,
Tom
Tom, the database has been built using data from https://www.radio-browser.info/
Thanks
Would be nice if the database also included the frequency of the shortwave stations like it does for the FM stations.
Tom
I’ve been playing around with the KTM mode and am pleasantly surprised at the results.
I did a search for “Dylan” and came up with virtual station 137173: Exclusively Bob Dylan – The United Arab Emirates.
There’s no way I would have ever run across this station.
Also did a search for “Zappa” and came across the 24 hr Frank Zappa station.
Lots of fun.
One suggestion – After typing in the search term, it would be nice if entering a carriage return automatically started the scan. Then there would be no need to separately press the Scan Button.
73
Bill WD9EQD
Smithville, NJ
This is what brings me joy and why I built it, I also discover various stations I would otherwise not have.
The carriage return is definitely going to be implemented, it’s a long story why it hasn’t already 🙂
Enjoy listening!
Carriage return just became reality, feel free to try 🙂
Here’s another one:
https://radio.garden/visit/manchester/nDFMS4a7
The number that posters have been calling a virtual frequency must be an index number. For example the frequency of an FM broadcaster is not within any FM band frequency range. So where are the broadcasters’ internet address. Companies have provided this service in the past, not keeping the computers up to date and then financially crashing leaving an interface like yours high and dry.
It would be better to be able to input and store your own IP addresses.
The UTC time should have the day of the week in 3 letters should be included because it can be behind or in front of local time.
I am listening to a German pop station, 100030, NSR Stadtradio,but when it breaks for a commercial, the content is for a local business. Huh? I’ve listened to a few other stations but haven’t heard any commercials.
Bill, this will be due to the station’s stream hosting service using the IP address of your device to geolocate your region and serve you local commercials. You usually notice this on big network org stations example listening to iHeart USA Network stations you will often be served Australian commercials when I drive and listen in Australia (my car has internet, DAB+ and FM radio, and its thee internet radio mode is all I use when driving).
Some small stations also have similar local to the listener pre-roll commercials as well to offset their operational cost.
Typo fixes and a bit extra to my message above…
When listening to iHeart USA Network stations you I am often be served Australian commercials when I drive and listen in Australia (my car has internet, DAB+ and FM radio, and the internet radio mode is all I use when driving.
There is no way I would ever go back to listening to FM (or AM) in my car! Having the whole world to select from on your car radio is so wonderful!
Nice interface – well done! I don’t see any way to search for a specific station, or to add a custom URL. Is that something that could be considered?
Is there an on-line list of stations. Too many to choose from, randomly. Also, the time should be in UTC.
Very nice! Thank you for sharing.
VERY NEAT!
I played around with the function and was surprised at the number of quality stations.
When I went back to CH 100,000 (BBC) it was jumping-around between two BBC stations quite a bit — perhaps BBC’s feed was doing that, but I couldn’t determine.
I have bookmarked this for experimenting later tonight. THANKS for such a neat website.
That seems to be due to the way Firefox is caching and so when you come back to the stream, it feeds a cached version but then jumps to live and then breaks to cache again.
Added some logic to prevent that behavior, please force refresh and try again, let me know if works as expected now.
Thanks!
Yes — the update seems to have worked very well now. I’m listening to BBC and it’s not jumping around as it was previously. Thanks!
This is a really neat application — glad to know of it, and will be letting others know!
Tnarks, nice attempt.
Needs some re-consideration and re-design.
As said earlier, ‘virtual frequency’ is a misnomer and it is misleading.
The interface picks up device’s internal clock. It should rather be UTC.
I think this is brilliant. Playing in the background now. I like the random aspect. Sort of like tuning a dial. Never know what you will find next. The ability to save favorite stations is a plus.
I added the UTC time as well so there is dual time now, local and UTC 🙂
Wow! You update lightning fast!
Great. Audio very clear.
Totally cool and fun! Thanks so much for sharing.
On my setup the volume is supper loud. I turned the slider almost total to the left but when I change stations the volume is back up again.
Thanks and have a great day,
Tom
Thank you for your feedback, that would make it unusable indeed, I haven’t noticed this behavior yet on the devices I have tested, I got an idea how to implement a solution though, let me work on it and will update the website in a few hours.
Tom, I added some extra logic to handle this case, please kindly reload and see if it works ok now.
I set it so that on the first turn on the radio (as in when you load the page) it defaults to 20% volume and then upon changing the station to retain the volume as set by you. If you off and on the radio without closing the page then the last set volume is used.
Would appreciate letting us know if it works ok for you now. Thank you!
Working great now. Is there some place where one could view a listen of the stations and their number?
Thanks and have a great day. Hope to do a video of this on my YouTube with your permission.
Tom
Correction. List of stations.
Still deciding on the best way to integrate this functionality in a way that will not take away from the form factor. The programming part has already been completed actually, just need to decide on the best way to integrate it from an UX standpoint, want to do something interesting.
That would be nice to see how your viewers take to this 🙂 Go ahead, thank you, much appreciated, let me know if you need anything from me.
Still looking for a list of stations, please.
Tom
The internet radio interface is great. But it will be even greater when the application includes the station list menu so it can be selected or searched by country, genre and current status (offline/online) criteria.
Noticed your video, thank you for your effort, interesting to see you using it, I have already implemented the search feature as KTM (Keyword Tuning Mode).
That new search feature makes it really useful. 🙂
Very nice!
Looks very interesting but confusing. What is Virtual Frequency?
Thanks,
Tom (Tom’s Radio Room on YouTube)
Thank you for your question, will update the info section with the details of how I see this virtual frequency concept.
To put it simply, it goes from 100000 to 999999, reason being to allow for consistency (always 6 digits) and the range should cover enough stations and also allow for this shortwave feel.
If the kind people here have better name for this, I am surely open for suggestions.
Hi, i like to search for stations by name, haha.