Re: Feedback Wanted: UI of FM receiver GsoC project

[Wolfgang Wilde]

If it is for the "Play" button, then it should be better named as "mute" or maybe "Squelch" and being processed with reverse logic:
    If pressed it should either reduce the audio volume by 20 dB (audio level), or maybe even totally mute the sound.

Or, maybe you want to implement something like "Squelch" - depending on RF signal level for example - then you could use it to switch on or off the muting of hissing sounds, while not receiving enough RF level for decoding the FM signal without background noise.
Maybe it could be even used to swith on/ off in different levels, so it
   * only would produce audio output on really strong RF levels with good signal quality, where the audio signal would be almost completely without any hiss.
   * Next level would be switching on for stations that can provide bearable stereo sound with some light hissing but producing mono sound almost without hissing.
   * And the next level then would be "always on" for audio output, so even the FM hissing sound will be presented.

But what I'm totally missing at that GUI is something to indicate and switch on/ off Stereo decoding! Weak stations or bad receiption situations may still work well, if you only have Mono, but then lead to ugly hissing, when trying to process the signal in stereo.
Also for some persons the TS (traffic service)/ TA (traffic announcement) Flags are important, that are indicated by some additional pilot tone while in the audio (baseband) spectrum. Thinking for example of some car radio being equiped with your receiver.
One could also think of some colour change for the display, either for signal quality, or (as it was used in vintage car stereo systems from "Blaupunkt") for indication of the traffic-service/ traffic-announcement - one colour for standard service, another one for traffic service/ announcement....

There were lots of good and innovative things already, when you look at old radio receivers (who would not love to have the "magic eye tube" display to show signal strength...?) ;-)



Best regards,
Wolfgang






 Am 05.06.25 um 15:54 schrieb Marcus Müller:

> Hi
>       Hamza,
>       
>       
>       love it! Would leave out the song cover display, to be honest –
>       showing the textual RDS info is enough for almost all users, and
>       you'd need not care about fetching covers. And I don't know where
>       you'd be getting station logos from; to the best of my logo, RDS
>       doesn't transmit logos.
>       
>       As such, I think your channel list might be relying too heavily on
>       the station icons being visually distinguishing elements! And
>       these icons don't exist in the radio transmission!
>       
>       
>       I'd rather have a larger (RDS terminology) *Programme Service
>       Name* being displayed (it can only be 8 characters long!) or *Long
>       Programme Service Name* (LPS, when available, <=32 UTF-8
>       characters), with the frequency found displayed below in a smaller
>       font, and maybe the *Programme Type* (PTY) and *Programme Type
>       Name* (PTYN) when available. I think keeping space for a (later)
>       signal strength indicator would be cool, too.
>       
>       
>       Something like:
>       
>       
>        ___ ___  ___ ____ _   ___ _    _   _               _   ___
>       _        _   _
>       
>       | _ ) _ )/ __|__  (_) | __(_)__| |_(_)___ _ _  __ _| | / __| |_ __
>       _| |_(_)___ _ _
>       
>       | _ \ _ \ (__  / / _  | _|| / _|  _| / _ \ ' \/ _` | | \__ \  _/
>       _` |  _| / _ \ ' \
>       
>       |___/___/\___|/_/ (_) |_| |_\__|\__|_\___/_||_\__,_|_|
>       |___/\__\__,_|\__|_\___/_||_|
>       
>       
>        🯱 🯰 🯰 .🯰 🯰 MHz    📶███████▒░░░    Education / Bringing you
>       the coolest fiction!
>       
>       
>       
>       (of course, not as ASCII-art, but I didn't have my graphics editor
>       handy.)
>       
>       
>       
>       I'm not sure what a "play" (▶) / next (⏵|)/ previous (|⏴) button
>       does in a radio receiver? If you mean "jump to next/previous found
>       station", then please use vertically pointing arrows instead of
>       left and right – your station list is vertical, too!
>       
>       (I'm still not sure what the "play" button does in a radio
>       receiver – it's not a cassette player!)
>       
>       
>       I don't specifically like the spotify UI (my media player software
>       is kind of the opposite of spotify in so many ways), so I'm not
>       very qualified to critique the overall design. But: you have a lot
>       of space around your channel list and waterfall display, so I'd
>       suggest you make the buttons beneath as large and easy to hit for
>       even someone shortsighted as possible, and make the volume slider
>       have a large, easy to see "handle": I really think that the common
>       loudness sliders where the user needs to know that they can drag
>       the end, without the end actually having a visible "knob" is a
>       design mistake, as I've seen *multiple* people fail to try doing
>       that, because common UX expectation is that things your can
>       interact with are somewhat "button shaped".
>       
>       
>       The "heart" icon seems to be "blindly stolen" from spotify and
>       cannot serve a purpose on a radio receiver, so I'd strongly
>       recommend removing it.
>       
>       
>       Best regards,
>       
>       Marcus
>       
>       On 6/4/25 10:20 PM, Hamza Mohammed wrote:
>       
> > Hi everyone! As part of my GSoC project,
> >         I’ve been working on an FM radio app, and I just finished the
> >         first layout draft—would love your thoughts!
> >         
> >         
> >         Main features:
> >         
> >         
> >           *
> >         
> >         
> >             *Debug view*: FM receiver controls like sampling rate,
> >         filter size, squelch, gain
> >         
> >             (still working on this part)
> >         
> >         
> >           *
> >         
> >         
> >             *Home page*: Auto SDR detection, frequency scanning, channel
> >         listing, multi-stream
> >         
> >             recording with RDS (station info, song titles, etc.)
> >         
> >         
> >           *
> >         
> >         
> >             *On-demand flowgraph control* for better performance
> >         
> >         
> >         The UI is kinda Spotify-inspired. I’ve attached sketches and
> >         Figma mockups—let me know if it’s missing something, looks off,
> >         or just feels boring. First time designing an app, so all
> >         feedback is welcome!
> >         
> >         
> >       
>       
>       
>