Commuting is a pain. Luckily, nearly every car has some sort of radio or other audio player to while away the hours stuck in traffic. However, most of those radios sport AM and FM bands, along with a weather band and–maybe–a long wave band. What if you prefer shortwave?
[Thomas] posted a review of the BST-1, a car-friendly shortwave receiver. The device is made to mount out of sight–presumably near an external antenna. It beams the shortwave signal to the car’s FM radio. The control is a small key fob and even if you aren’t interested in the radio itself, the user interface design is somewhat interesting.
A single press on one of the two fob buttons produces a common action. If you press and hold the button, however, you’ll hear a beep. Keep holding it and you’ll hear two beeps. This continues until you get four beeps. When you let go after a sequence of beeps, you perform a different function. For example, letting go of the bottom button after two beeps toggles between preset and tune mode, while releasing after three beeps toggles the receiver bandwidth between 3 kHz and 5 kHz.
You can see a video about the BST-1, below. The review draws the conclusion that the BST-1 is not a serious receiver for weak signal work, but it is a lot of fun for its intended purpose.
The receiver doesn’t handle sideband; it is AM-only. If you think shortwave is boring, maybe you’ll find some espionage activity lurking around.
I have a 1969 Mercedes 280SE that came with a Blaupunkt AM/FM/SW radio, and it works. I’m probably selling the car soon but the radio will stay with me because I love SW.
Shortwave is an essential for long drives or rides. I carry a receiver when I go on long trips. Handy to listen to the news on.
I presume that radios in most regions outside the UK don’t have Medium & Shortwave anymore, as my car’s factory radio has AM, FM Medium & Short wave tuning on it. or am I just lucky that ford decided to keep this functionality in their unit?
I can’t stand people who drive and use their phone, especially if they are filming while driving.
Fucking straight up morons. Inconsiderate apes.
After reading this comment I re-watched the video, paying close attention to the tiny bit of road that can be seen…
Get a passenger to record the video and play with buttons [Thomas]!
I’m not very impressed with a certain right turn you made while juggling.
groundbreaking, insightful commentary
I had a Icom 706mkII in my vehicle when I used to have to commute over the cascades in the 90s. I should have bought a used Cessna 150 or 172. But the SW and Art Bell helped keep me sane-ish when the FM petered out and I was sick of my CDs, sure made me paranoid of black helicopters and aliens though.
Thanks for reminding me of Art Bell. Always interesting discussions to listen to while I work
“The control is a small key fob and even if you aren’t interested in the radio itself, the user interface design is somewhat interesting.”
It’s exactly the same system that’s been used on a lot of brushless ESCs for quite some time now. Anyone working with multicopters should already be used to it. It can be quite annoying if you got a menu with 10+ settings and miss the one you’re after.
Oddly, my motorcycle helmet Bluetooth headset uses the same kind of thing.
Adding SW to a car stereo is easy, I have developed two so far that are in the market place and both could have had SW but neither have it. The first one simply needs the SW supporting version of the tuner chip but it would have added another 50c to the BOM cost. This is on a stereo that retails for $200. The other head unit has has a tuner with SW support but no software support for it. In both cases the marketing teams saw no demand for SW. I may add SW support to it in my spare time and see if I can get it slipped into future software releases.
I see the station that libeled Art Bell and his son and caused his retreat form radio is still spouting rubbish.
The concept is great, RDS the “dial” to an up-to-date radio!
Unfortunately the glory days of SW are long gone. There isn’t a thing there that can’t be found in the Bible except the exact time and an A440 at the third minute. Any Cuban dance music on Radio Marti? Time is running out on it and those jammers. Soon Radio Havana will be like WSM 650 AM is to Nashville.
There are English-Chinese lessons on CRI, but at least in the Med area I had a week without internet and the SW listening was pretty bland beyond basic news, some Chinese culture, Arabic chanting, the terribly bland yet somehow psy-op’y Voice of America, and the official social position of the UK on BBC. Nothing like I remember as a kid with my Riga brand Soviet shortwave set in the early 80s, damn good radio that, until I tried to open up AM air band and ruined it.
If you want a commercial unit, get a Kenwood car radio – I’ve recently got a mechless unit which has shortwave.
$189.95 with what looks like a little stick-on antenna. Outrageous. I’ll bet this thing is based on a tiny $3 Silicon Labs Si473x (or Si4824/4827/4836) chip, a $1 8-bit micro-controller, a $1 Chinese key fob tx/rx set, and a $1 Chinese single chip FM stereo modulator/transmitter chip. In production lots roughly $10 in parts with PCB. Heck the enclosure probably adds half that again to the parts cost which must run less than $20 total. So let’s assume $25 cost contract assembled from Asia – $189.95 is a 760% mark-up. Even if they’re assembling by hand in 100’s lots in the U.S., the mark-up is most likely still outrageous.
If you build it – they will come.
And there’s a thousand suckers born every day…
Or for rather less cash, there’s the Pioneer DEH-X2750UI car radio, with FM(RDS),AM,SW & CD.
It’s a shame it only does AM – most activity on Shortwave is single sideband.
However I can understand why they have only AM. Because AM uses a carrier the receiver can lock on to the signal and make sure it’s on the correct frequency. With SSB there is no carrier, you have to manually finetune otherwise you’ll be hearing donald duck voices or darth vader :) It probably would be too fiddly to do this in the car, at the very least it would require a much bigger control fob with a manual finetuning dial.
There are many ham radio sets for cars but they are also much bigger and I wouldn’t really want to operate one while driving.
Ah sorry I looked more into it – it’s for broadcast only, so having it AM only makes total sense.
My experience with this unit has been very positive, with super-easy installation. I drive 44 miles one-way to work and it’s a blessing to have alternative entertainment. It works as advertised in the YouTube videos – kudos to the designer!
I’ve had one since July 2016. Works great, no ignition noise at all and very good fidelity. The preset feature is perfect for driving and searching for commonly listened to frequencies. I can hear Alex Jones on 12160 during lunch hour while driving to my afternoon work. I compared sensitivity to my Kaito portable and whatever the Kaito hears, I can hear on the car radio. But, the Kaito is very much affected by car ignition noise where as the BST-1 has none.
The BST-1 car shortwave receiver by Expert Technology Studios is straight out brilliant!
I have wanted a shortwave radio in the car since the 1970’s when I rode in a Mercedes that had a built in shortwave radio.
When I saw the web page for the BST-1 I ordered on the spot. http://carshortwaveradio.com/
Install was a snap and the antenna mounted perfectly on my 2017 Mini Cooper.
What blew my mind was how well the radio works and how well the entire system is thought out.
I did a bit of research and learned this radio is designed by FRED STUDENBERG Engineering Group Manager for 38 years with Rockwell Collins (Collins Radio).
The radio is super sensitive and there is ZERO motor noise due to DSP noise reduction and DSP filtering.
The tuning is done with a small key fob and the system is wonderful. You can change from presets to manual tuning with out ever talking your eyes off the road.
It will tell you the mode you are in and even frequency in Morse code!
The receiver sends the frequency you are on as well as the signal strength to your FM radio. All wireless, which means no cables behind the car radio to mess with.
If your FM radio has RDS, you will also see the tuned shortwave frequency, signal level and mode right on the screen in your car.
Bill Ruppert W9WCR
Does this radio copy ssb?
I wonder if there is an economical SW project lurking around the Raspberry Pi community?
I bought this radio about 8 years ago. I have had it installed in 2 vehicles during that time. Having been an avid SWL’er since 1967, I can tell you that this is one of the best automobile SW receiver I have had. No, It doesn’t do SSB, but it covers the entire HF frequency range. The antenna is solidly mounted and works surprising well for it’s size. You do not have to take your eyes off the road to tune the radio either. The frequency and signal strength appear on your FM radio if you have RDS. You must a clear or weak signal FM station in the lower part of the FM band to receive the radios audio. FRED STUDENBERG, the builder of the radio was always available for questions and responds quickly to emails.
I do not know if the radio is still available, but I am glad that I have had this trouble free dependable radio in my cars for so long
I wonder if anyone knows where I could get one right now…. I am really wishing to try it.