Soarer FM radio conversion
Copyright 2007 Unique Design Concepts
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author: Vlad Apostolov
email: udc.aus@gmail.com
Melbourne, Australia 2007
Version 1.1
Disclaimer
The installation of this kit is complex and carries a potential risk of damaging your car as well as the components comprising this kit. Unique Design Concepts does not assume any responsibility if the kit does not function as anticipated in your car. Prior to being advertised for selling, the kit was successfully implemented in Soarer model 1997.
It is the responsibility of the person installing the kit to ensure that all steps of the installation process are carried with utmost care and all necessary precautions are taken to ensure that the car, the audio unit, and the kit components are not damaged. Unique Design Concepts does not assume any responsibilities for damages caused as a result of improper installation. Unique Design Concepts does not assume any responsibilities and liabilities for damages and side effects to the car or personal injuries in the process of installing and using the audio conversion kit.
Unique Design Concepts reserves the rights to change the kit and the installation instructions document at any time without prior notification. The document is prepared with every intention to be correct, but it is not guaranteed to be free of errors.
The quality of the radio reception could vary from perfect to poor depending on the strength and the quality of the radio signal. This is not a limitation of the conversion but a limitation of the radio unit capabilities and its antennas. The Soarer FM radio antennas are optimized for horizontal polarization (horizontal wires on the back window) while the antennas of most other cars are optimized for vertical polarization (vertical telescopic antennas). Some FM radio stations in Australia transmit only vertical polarization considered most optimal for mobile FM receivers. The Soarer FM radio will receive such channels with poorer quality compared to other cars. The horizontal polarization antennas are direction sensitive. The strongest signal is received when the antenna dipoles are perpendicular to the direction towards the transmitter and lowest when the dipoles are aligned to the direction towards the transmitter. This is another disadvantage of the Soarer FM antennas compared to other cars, which are less sensitive to the transmitter location.
All considerations have been taken in the kit hardware and software design to ensure minimum power consumption. The current consumption is less than 1ma.
Sales inquiries and technical support
For sales inquiries and technical support please email to udc.aus@gmail.com
Getting started
All Soarer cars imported in Australia require FM band expander to be fitted on the radio antenna input in order for the radio to receive Australian broadcast channels. The FM band expanders have various limitations often leading to poor radio reception. The following link explains the most common reception problems caused by the FM band expanders.
http://www.edl.co.nz/ConvertersHP/how-to-select.htm
The Soarer FM radio conversion kit modifies the radio circuit to allow native FM reception without the need for external FM band expander.
Here is a description of how the conversion works.
The original Japanese FM frequency band is 76MHz – 90MHz. To map the Australian band of 88MHz to 108MHz the conversion kit adds a frequency band offset to the synthesizer circuit. For example adding 12MHz band offset will shift the Japanese band up to 88Mhz – 102MHz. As it can be seen the frequencies between 102.1MHz-108MHz cannot be received.
If the band offset is set to 18MHz, the resulting shift will be 94MHz-108MHz.
In this case frequencies between 88MHz and 93.9MHz cannot be received.
The conversion allows programmable frequency offset. The table bellow shows the 5 different frequency bands that can be received.
The selection of the range is via the AM radio EMV user screen. The highest five AM frequency channels are used for this purpose. For example to select band offset of 20MHz, tune to 1629KHz in the AM EMV radio screen, and switch to FM screen. From here on the FM radio would be able to receive band 96MHz – 110MHz.
Figure 1 shows the contents of the kit.
Figure 1
The microcontroller chip is used to offset the radio frequency synthesizer band. The eight surface mount varicaps are used to retune the radio FM module. The double sided sticky pad is used to attach the microcontroller chip to the radio PCB board. The seven colored wires are for the microcontroller chip electrical connection to the radio PCB board.
The disassembly of the Soarer radio receiver is described in details here:
Soarer EMV audio conversion kit
Once the radio is opened, cut the three PCB tracks circled in red on Figure 2. Clean the two vias circled in yellow from the protective lacquer.
Figure 2
Stick the provided double sided sticky pad as shown on Figure 3.
Figure 3
Figure 4 shows the chip connected to the radio PCB via the rainbow wires provided with the kit.
Figure 4
The orange, red and brown wires are soldered to pin two, three and four of IC602. Note the microcontroller chip orientation – pin 1 (marked at the top left corner of the chip) is soldered to the purple wire.
The last conversion step is to replace the radio FM module varicaps with the ones provided with the kit. This step is described in full details in chapter “FM tuner retuning” of Soarer EMV audio conversion kit.