Do you guys have the chance to get involved with the Atmel AVR Atmega168 RDS decoder? If you haven’t, would you wish to get even closer with RDS?

Well, today you will have the opportunity to build your very own Radio Data System (RDS) decoder with a microcontroller from Atmel. This decoder is obviously fed by a RDS demodulator IC, which included RDDA (data signal) and RDCL (clock signal) outputs!

Technically, the microcontroller is an Atmega168 and it’s clocked on the external 4.332MHz crystal from the RDS demodulator. You might want to use the TDA7330B RDS demodulator IC from STMicroelectronics and connected it to the Atmega168, where the RDDA is connected to PD4 and RDCL to INT0.

Plus, you can use the old Hauppauge WinTV PCI card with FM tuner, which you can tune to the Frequency you want with some open source software. Or, if you don’t mind, you can apply an FM1216 from Philips and it has an unmodulated MPX FM signal output that the RDS demodulator need the most! Basically, it’s the same signal, where it’s being fed into a stereo decoder to produce stereo sound outputs in the end.