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Technical Topics => Equipment => Topic started by: ThaDood on December 15, 2022, 2047 UTC

Title: SWL´ing TEF6686 chip radio? Neat!!!!
Post by: ThaDood on December 15, 2022, 2047 UTC
https://swling.com/blog/2022/12/ivan-checks-out-the-new-tef6686-chip-radio/    Looks like a kit, but I like that display.
Title: Re: SWL´ing TEF6686 chip radio? Neat!!!!
Post by: Charlie_Dont_Surf on December 17, 2022, 0718 UTC
The NXP chip at the center of this thing is not new, as claimed in the SWLing post; the two versions came out in 2013.

Sidenote that likely nobody but me cares about: there is no real datasheet for the chip on the NXP website. There as brochure describing the features and another short datasheet that gives a few specs and block diagram. If you actually wanted to use one of these things, you need things like the register map, the I2C word format, etc. They will save that info for the long datasheet and the only way to get that is to be enough invested that NXP sees you as an important customer. (They primarily hide this info to keep the info out of the hands of the competition initially but since this thing is 10 years old, you can count on it having been reverse engineered by about 9.9 years ago. :D ) They don't just hand out the programming info to any schmuck that writes to them asking for it.

Bottom line, whoever is making this radio isn't just some dude making one or two in his basement in China. A quick look at AliExpress confirms that: https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-tef6686.html (https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-tef6686.html) Maybe it's a car radio manufacturer in China who got the info legit and they are making these radios as a side hustle.