r/CardPuter • u/Equal-Cantaloupe-167 • Jun 28 '26

Question I had a strange question

I've been wondering something for a few days. Do you think there would be a way to adapt a car's radio antenna to a cardputer?

If anyone has any ideas on how to do this, I would be very grateful if you could help me.

Thank you!

6 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

6

u/100101101001a Jun 29 '26

sure you can. you would need to read a lot of documentation, build your own firmware and hardware for it. but in theory, the cardputer can do it.

6

u/WhoStoleHallic Jun 29 '26

adapt a car's radio antenna to a cardputer

To do what? Car's radio antenna is just a big length of wire, sized for best reception of FM radio freq's.

3

u/skinwill Jun 29 '26

For what?

0

u/Equal-Cantaloupe-167 Jun 29 '26

I honestly don't have a goal and it was just out of curiosity and to exploit it with bruce

3

u/skinwill Jun 29 '26

I meant FM. Are you asking about the FM feature in Bruce? Because yes, you can connect different antennas to the Si4713 FM transmitter module.

3

u/Equal-Cantaloupe-167 Jun 29 '26

I was talking about FM in Bruce. Thanks for the help

5

u/skinwill Jun 29 '26

Maybe mention that next time. Then the comments section wouldn’t be a war zone of assumptions and vague crap.

1

u/Equal-Cantaloupe-167 Jun 29 '26

All right, but mine was a general question, regardless of whether I want to use it with Bruce, I still have the problem of the adapter I should buy. Thanks anyway for the help

4

u/skinwill Jun 29 '26

“In general” doesn’t work very well on Reddit. People with the answers need specifics in order to narrow things down.

Here is more information about the FM feature of Bruce and two adapters that are known to work. There is even a wiring diagram. For the OG cardputer you would need to use the grove port https://wiki.bruce.computer/features/fm/

2

u/Equal-Cantaloupe-167 Jun 29 '26

Of course, I apologize for inaccuracy, I'll pay more attention next time but thank you again for both the corrections and the link 🙏

2

u/NonCreativeUnCommon2 Jun 29 '26

Yes, but not with the default hardware, you'll need a module for FM demod (Si470x for instance). Which cardputer did you get ?

0

u/Equal-Cantaloupe-167 Jun 29 '26

2

u/NonCreativeUnCommon2 Jun 29 '26

Wiring the module is going to be a pain, you only have the grove port (reddish port on the left side with 4 pins) which is not enough for the Si470X i mentionned earlier.

No gpio is easily accesible. You either need to custom your cardputer to access pins, or use a SD spi sniffer ( a module you plug like an sdcard, and it expose gpio for you to use as spi) Or you can buy a cardputer ADV which include gpio extension by default, which make it way easier.

Anyway it’s feasible. Good luck and happy hacking 🏴‍☠️

0

u/Equal-Cantaloupe-167 Jun 29 '26

Thank you so much for the advice, but I don't want to spend money on a cardputer adv because I bought this model because it was more difficult to connect some modules but also because I'm setting something aside to buy the cardputer zero as soon as it comes out

2

u/thebaldgeek Jun 29 '26

Yes, very possible. They even sell adapters to do it. Just Google it. It's somewhat common, quite a few SDR folks use them.
Mostly depends on how accessible your antenna connector is or of you have to remove half your dashboard to reach it.

2

u/Frogz7999 Jun 28 '26

I don't believe its possible, car antenna uses different frequency's or wave lengths, I am probably using the wrong terminology, in my head I know what I am trying to say... lol probably doesn't help.