One partial solution is the "RDS Manager" sold by the German electronics
(etc) retailer Conrad. They also are mail-order - but refuse to sell in the
USA or Canada. The "RDS Manager" can easily be modified to output to your
computer. There's free software on the Web to interpret the output string.
The unit cost around $25 plus wall-wart power supply. The unit has an LCD
as its normal output.

It obtained input from the normal audio output of your radio. Enough RDS
signal leaks out of the audio output to allow the RDS Manager to work. No
receiver mods required in most cases.

Now the down side. It is no longer available. Apparently so many European
radios incorporate RDS that the market dried up.

I suspect that a dozen or more units were privately imported into the USA. I
personally know of two, and have heard of a third.

As for the radio itself, you could do worse than buying the ICOM. I forget
whether the WinRadio covers VHF.

You didn't say whether you are in North America or Europe. RDS is
widespread in Europe, but rare in the USA. There is, however, renewed
interest in R(B)DS on the part of US broadcasters.

73 de bob w3otc


"Gabriel" wrote in message
om...
I'm looking for either a PC card radio receiver or an external FM
receiver which can be connected to the computer in order to process
the RDS data, specially the station ID.

I'm involved in a project for automatic detection of propagation
conditions on the VHF bands and what I need is a receiver that can be
fully controlled by the computer, scanning continuosly, identifying
the stations received, and logging them in a database for later
analysis.