Building the über-radio
After I discovered last week that my old Sangean world-band radio receiver still worked, I began hatching a plan to hook it up to my computer so that I could listen to broadcasts from all around the world from the convenience of my desktop. I already have a RadioShark, but that gets spotty reception only on the standard AM and FM bands. Using the Sangean, I can listen into much more than commercial radio.
Similar to to the Sangean, my Uniden Bearcat scanner has been sitting unused along with the Tapco mixer I received for Christmas a few years ago. Rather than let the equipment continue to collect dust, I cleared off a bookshelf and put all the pieces together as shown below:
Not pictured is my Sennheiser e815s microphone hooked into channel two, and the iMic that takes the output from the mixer and converts it into the output of a USB sound card. I can listen to the the device using Audio Hijack Pro. Between the Bearcat scanner and the world-band radio, I figure that I can keep up with local and global events fairly well.
Update: Here's a small recording of some scanner activity to give you an idea what comes across the airwaves. It's not that exciting, but it's fairly interesting to listen to:
