
Innovation: Pocket FM!!! A Novel Concept!!!
In the modern world technological innovations pop up everywhere all the time but the radio continues to be a vital source for entertainment and information. More so in regions where the modern resources like Internet, mobile phones or even electricity are absent. These are more likely crisis regions where disasters happened or developing countries such as Syria and Tanzania.
The answer for these regions is Pocket FM, a portable FM radio transmitter for crisis regions and developing countries, which enables communication without internet, mobile phone and electricity shut downs or unavailability.
The pocket FM was born following a co-creation process which involved a team of people with diverse backgrounds who specialized in finding solutions after researching the needs of people in crisis regions. It is built in a modular way, which can be easily customized for specific cases. It uses standard components, which can be easily repaired or modified, by using locally available materials and it can be easily adapted to different situations.
The Pocket FM is beta tested now in crisis regions and developing countries and it is build in such a way that enables easy connection and development of new features, with a straight forward easy to use interface.
Since it can be connected to a car battery, a generator or even a solar panel, it is not dependent on any external power supply. Due to its compatible size of a shoebox, it can be safely moved around in difficult conditions and also can be secured by a pin lock, which will enable transmissions only following the provision of a security code.
The Pocket FM can also be used to send out short TXT message to the listeners and when the default frequency is jammed it can find automatically new frequencies.
The Pocket FM project is featured by MiCT and was founded by the German Federal Foreign Office.
Sources:
http://www.mict-international.org/projects/syrian-radio-journalists-working-together/