With the pursuit of most of the radio as part of a computer, it may seem strange to have a standalone communication receiver, but [OM0ET] reviews the last one he took, ATS25. Inside is not much: battery, speaker, encoder and Si4732, which provides RF muscle.
The receiver seems to be quite broadband, which can be a problem. [OM0ET] suggests adding selectivity to the antenna or adding an additional board to be used as a bandpass filter.
The design is simple enough, we are sure that you can easily hack the device to do different things. Most coverage stops at 30MHz, but there is an FM band, so we were wondering if you could make it work on other frequencies.
It is clear that the part of the Arduino will be easily hacked. For the price, we were both impressed with the touch screen and the design, but maybe less impressed with the RF filtering. On the other hand, the small form factor would be great for traveling with a backpack or portable use and is not that expensive. It seems to work pretty well in practice.
We have seen similar home radio stations using the same chipset or at least, similar.