December 5, 2024

This Week in Amateur Radio

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Hackaday

via HACKADAY: Generating Stereo FM Signals, Thanks to Python

A casual understanding of how AM radio works is pretty easy to come by, and standard FM is only a little more complicated. Things can go off the tracks a bit with stereo FM, though — figuring out how they squeeze two separate audio tracks onto one radio signal is a bit of a head-scratcher. In that case, wrapping your head around the concept might be helped by mocking up a stereo FM signal with an arbitrary waveform generator and a little bit of Python.

Not that [Sebastian] of Baltic Lab was unfamiliar with multiplex FM theory, mind you. As he explains it, his goal was to generate a valid stereo FM signal with a different pure tone on each channel, 700 Hz on the left and 2,200 Hz on the right. Luckily, [Sebastian] has a nice AWG, the Siglent SDG1032X, which has an Ethernet connection that can be used to control it remotely along with PyVISA, a Python package for controlling instruments using the Virtual Instrument Software Architecture protocol.