I could swear that a few years ago, someone made an entire am broadcast transmitter onto a single IC. It had everything but the passive devices onboard, all in a little DIP package.
However, I'm no longer finding anything like that via Google.
Am I chasing a dream?
Maybe your memory is correct but the only ones I know of are the MC1496 and MC13175/76 chips.
The 1496 is not a complete transmitter but it does provide excellent generation of double sideband suppressed carrier or AM. It requires separate carrier and audio circuits.
The Rohm 1415 series are complete but they are for FM.
Neil
Has anyone here been following the Raspberry Pi?
Somebody is trying to find a Raspberry Pi AM Transmitter!
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=39140&p=324508
The Rasberry PI is a computer.
Oh. I understand now. crud.
Bruce, DOGS AND RADIOS
The Raspberry Pi computer is similar to the Arduino which I have been playing with so maybe my experience will apply. The Arduino Mega I have has a 16 MHz clock and there is a model (the Due) with an 85 MHz clock which presumably would execute code faster. These seem fast but the number of clock cycles per instruction makes code execution slower than it first appears.
Another limit is that these are programmed using a form of C or C++ language which is then compiled to machine code. With compilation the number of instructions for even a simple source code statement is large. As an example, a simple counter program I wrote with about 30 lines of code compiled to over 4 kB of code.
An interrupt driven timer controlled frequency generator sketch (program) I downloaded and ran will generate a square wave up to 35 kHz. This is just too slow for AM work but it could perhaps work for the audio section. Maybe if the devices are programmed in machine language the code will run much faster but I don't know by how much. I have coded microprocessors in machine language and it is remarkable how fast they can execute code because the code is small.
For high efficiency some sort of on/off switching circuit would be needed so perhaps a pulse width modulator IC could be used. These are available to work at very high frequencies.
This is just some thinking out loud with no real numbers but maybe this will illustrate some of the things which are involved.
Neil
You know all of the old stuff
and the new stuff, too!
Bruce, The Dog Radio Group
Ok.. It's not am, but maybe someone could figure out how to make it am. Imagine all the cool stuff? Atu, servo controller to fine tune the antenna remotely, freq change remotely, add a wifi dongle and get a built in StL. http://www.icrobotics.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Turning_the_Raspberry_Pi_Into_an_FM_Transmitter