[chirp_devel] Baofeng UV-3R
Glad to hear you've added some preliminary support for this. I'm just curious what did this radio look like from a protocol perspective?
Are there any similarities emerging for these chinese radios?
Glad to hear you've added some preliminary support for this. I'm just curious what did this radio look like from a protocol perspective?
Are there any similarities emerging for these chinese radios?
Yes. Before I got the programming cable from the person I borrowed it from, I put it on the service monitor to check it out. I knew right then that it wasn't the Yaesu guts and that they only attempted to mimic the external appearance. I have a little more on that, if you're interested.
The programming mechanism and memory format are very similar to the Wouxun, Puxing, and the other radios that appear to have come from a stolen commercial Kenwood radio. You can see from the patch that I just added it as a variant of the Wouxun, using the same core upload/download routines.
The memory format is strange and I honestly can say I don't really understand it. The strangeness may be indicative of a firmware author that didn't really know what he was doing, but rather was just tasked with porting some of the stolen firmware to their radio. It seems to store the memory channels twice in memory, once at the beginning and once at the end. It stores the TX frequency separate from the RX frequency (like the Wouxun) but also stores the offset (unlike the Wouxun) and uses that instead of the TX frequency when you hit PTT.
Storage of the tone and DCS code information is simpler and more straightforward than the Puxing and Wouxun (which are both nearly identical but just different enough to be annoying).
How's that?
Dan, thanks, that helps my curiosity a bit.
A number of things about the Wouxun made more sense after someone had posted the datasheet for the microcontroller which the vendor named "FRS-MCU".
http://www.emc.com.tw/eng/com_prod_dsc.asp?gid=&tid=000002&tt=com_fr...
I haven't looked yet to see if the Puxing, TYT, etc. are using the same chip or same manufacturer. Though I suppose some of them could be using clones of this chip or that chip is a clone of ... (loop detected).
On 7/26/2011 9:59 AM, Dan Smith wrote:
[...] I put it on the service monitor to check it out. I knew right then that it wasn't the Yaesu guts and that they only attempted to mimic the external appearance. I have a little more on that, if you're interested.
If you are willing to take the time to type it, I'd love to read it.
The memory format is strange and I honestly can say I don't really understand it. The strangeness may be indicative of a firmware author that didn't really know what he was doing, but rather was just tasked with porting
I suspect you are right. That pattern seems to show up in other products.
I haven't looked yet to see if the Puxing, TYT, etc. are using the same chip or same manufacturer. Though I suppose some of them could be using clones of this chip or that chip is a clone of ... (loop detected).
Yeah, I haven't looked closely. There are several tear down reports of the UV-3R out there with everything documented pretty well. The core of the device is a single-chip FM transceiver DSP that was built for HT-like devices. I imagine that it is plenty good, but requires adequate supporting infrastructure to make a useful entire package. It's very sensitive, almost to the limit of my (old) service monitor, but I imagine that's partly do to the (gross) lack of frontend filtering.
If you are willing to take the time to type it, I'd love to read it.
There's more information available on the nearly 1000-member yahoo group. But:
The microcontroller running the interface is either overtaxed, slow, or poorly programmed. Each button requires a significant press to get it to register. Long-press secondary functions take way too long. The interaction and menu layout, however, is very usable and better than any of the other chinese knock-offs that I've seen thus far.
It clearly has some shielding and filtering issues. With the programming cable connected, I can transmit on VHF and it will stay keyed (due to RFI in the cable) until I unplug something.
The widely-reported second harmonic on VHF is only 6dB down on most radios, which is about 54dB below the legal limit. Some people have had success adding a filter capacitor to drop it down a bit, while other people report it makes it worse.
The VHF image (at about 73MHz) is only attenuated like 20dB. There is a bunch of junk coming right out the antenna jack at various parts of the band.
The "drop in charger" is nothing of the sort. It's a vertical stand for the radio, with a separate bay to charge the battery. The battery is a LiOn unit, but there are no charging smarts in the base, just a 5V supply directly into the battery. That's, like, not cool. I hope they do something smarter if charging it within the handheld, but I think I'd check on that before I held it to my face while charging.
The unit itself only takes 5v (not 12 or 13.8) in the side jack, which is pretty annoying.
I has the obligatory (apparently China is very dark) "flashlight" on the top.
If not for the illegal RF emissions and the dangerous battery situation, it might be a worthy "throwaway" radio at less than $50.
participants (2)
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Dan Smith -
Robert Terzi