I recently purchased a TYT TH-8600 and am starting working through mapping out the memory so that I can hopefully eventually put together a PR to add support for this radio, as it's been requested quite a few times.
This will be my first attempt to do this and I have a couple newbie questions:
1 - Does anyone have any recommendations for a similar TYT radio that I should look to use as a 'closest' starting point? I've been looking at a few different TYT models and while the themes are similar there are some reasonably big differences among them. I'm not familiar enough with their product line to know which ones might be the closest to the TH-8600. If no one knows, I'll just suffer though figuring it out.
2- This radio supports a few features ( 2Tone & 5Tone signalling, etc.) that aren't typically used in amateur radio. Is it normal practice to fully tease out the entire memory map and add support for these types of things to CHIRP, or just skip them?
Thanks,
Andy KN1TT
1 - Does anyone have any recommendations for a similar TYT radio that I should look to use as a 'closest' starting point? I've been looking at a few different TYT models and while the themes are similar there are some reasonably big differences among them. I'm not familiar enough with their product line to know which ones might be the closest to the TH-8600. If no one knows, I'll just suffer though figuring it out.
I can't answer this, but someone else probably can.
2- This radio supports a few features ( 2Tone & 5Tone signalling, etc.) that aren't typically used in amateur radio. Is it normal practice to fully tease out the entire memory map and add support for these types of things to CHIRP, or just skip them?
The answer to this is "whatever you want". Some people love nothing more than teasing out every last bit in the memory map. I am not one of those people ;) You kinda need to implement enough for it to be useful and pass tests, but it's not critical to implement everything. I'm guilty of usually just implementing the stuff in the radio that _I_ use until and unless someone asks for something specific.
--Dan
I did the UV8000D/E version, and like Dan, I usually only bother with the most common settings. Check out the MEM_FORMAT string in the driver (attached), and note the read/write process.
On 7/18/2023 7:51 PM, Dan Smith via chirp_devel wrote:
1 - Does anyone have any recommendations for a similar TYT radio that I should look to use as a 'closest' starting point? I've been looking at a few different TYT models and while the themes are similar there are some reasonably big differences among them. I'm not familiar enough with their product line to know which ones might be the closest to the TH-8600. If no one knows, I'll just suffer though figuring it out.
I can't answer this, but someone else probably can.
2- This radio supports a few features ( 2Tone & 5Tone signalling, etc.) that aren't typically used in amateur radio. Is it normal practice to fully tease out the entire memory map and add support for these types of things to CHIRP, or just skip them?
The answer to this is "whatever you want". Some people love nothing more than teasing out every last bit in the memory map. I am not one of those people ;) You kinda need to implement enough for it to be useful and pass tests, but it's not critical to implement everything. I'm guilty of usually just implementing the stuff in the radio that _I_ use until and unless someone asks for something specific.
--Dan _______________________________________________ chirp_devel mailing list chirp_devel@intrepid.danplanet.com http://intrepid.danplanet.com/mailman/listinfo/chirp_devel Developer docs:http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Developers
I bought one also when on sale this spring with this intention, but haven't actually powered it on yet! (Unfortunately I accidentally bought the non-waterproof version.)
I'm new to Chirp driver development but willing to work with you on testing or coding an 8600 driver.
I've started working on my first driver, for the Radioddity DB20G (aka Anytone 779UV, Retevis RA25, prob also the DB20UV). I need to send a status message to the list on that!
Also have a working driver for the old Quansheng UV50R I found online that I need to upload via proper protocol that for some reason never got published in CHIRP by its original creator. Been using over a year with no problems.
-g
On Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 10:07 PM Andy Knitt via chirp_devel < chirp_devel@intrepid.danplanet.com> wrote:
I recently purchased a TYT TH-8600 and am starting working through mapping out the memory so that I can hopefully eventually put together a PR to add support for this radio, as it's been requested quite a few times.
This will be my first attempt to do this and I have a couple newbie questions:
1 - Does anyone have any recommendations for a similar TYT radio that I should look to use as a 'closest' starting point? I've been looking at a few different TYT models and while the themes are similar there are some reasonably big differences among them. I'm not familiar enough with their product line to know which ones might be the closest to the TH-8600. If no one knows, I'll just suffer though figuring it out.
2- This radio supports a few features ( 2Tone & 5Tone signalling, etc.) that aren't typically used in amateur radio. Is it normal practice to fully tease out the entire memory map and add support for these types of things to CHIRP, or just skip them?
Thanks,
Andy KN1TT _______________________________________________ chirp_devel mailing list chirp_devel@intrepid.danplanet.com http://intrepid.danplanet.com/mailman/listinfo/chirp_devel Developer docs: http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Developers
Sounds good, thanks Gary. I'll let you know when I have something ready to test. I'm getting close, but it's throwing me some curve balls. Unlike every other TYT radio, this silly thing sends the data across the wire in ASCII format rather than binary. I've got it dumping the memory to me but I need to work through converting it back to binary for CHIRP to unpack and then go from there. I think I have the memory channel portion of the memory map more or less worked out and will dig into the radio-wide settings once I can successfully read & write.
For those that are more experienced than me...what are the odds of bricking the thing with a bad write? My assumption is that they should be reasonably tolerant, but I want to get a feel for how confident I need to be in my code before I start attempting writes.
Andy
On Wed, Jul 19, 2023 at 11:06 PM Gary Pupurs garyrp@gmail.com wrote:
I bought one also when on sale this spring with this intention, but haven't actually powered it on yet! (Unfortunately I accidentally bought the non-waterproof version.)
I'm new to Chirp driver development but willing to work with you on testing or coding an 8600 driver.
I've started working on my first driver, for the Radioddity DB20G (aka Anytone 779UV, Retevis RA25, prob also the DB20UV). I need to send a status message to the list on that!
Also have a working driver for the old Quansheng UV50R I found online that I need to upload via proper protocol that for some reason never got published in CHIRP by its original creator. Been using over a year with no problems.
-g
On Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 10:07 PM Andy Knitt via chirp_devel < chirp_devel@intrepid.danplanet.com> wrote:
I recently purchased a TYT TH-8600 and am starting working through mapping out the memory so that I can hopefully eventually put together a PR to add support for this radio, as it's been requested quite a few times.
This will be my first attempt to do this and I have a couple newbie questions:
1 - Does anyone have any recommendations for a similar TYT radio that I should look to use as a 'closest' starting point? I've been looking at a few different TYT models and while the themes are similar there are some reasonably big differences among them. I'm not familiar enough with their product line to know which ones might be the closest to the TH-8600. If no one knows, I'll just suffer though figuring it out.
2- This radio supports a few features ( 2Tone & 5Tone signalling, etc.) that aren't typically used in amateur radio. Is it normal practice to fully tease out the entire memory map and add support for these types of things to CHIRP, or just skip them?
Thanks,
Andy KN1TT _______________________________________________ chirp_devel mailing list chirp_devel@intrepid.danplanet.com http://intrepid.danplanet.com/mailman/listinfo/chirp_devel Developer docs: http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Developers
Gary,
I took a quick look at the Anytone 779UV and it's probably pretty close to what I've been developing for the (Anytone-based) PowerWerx DB750-X.
I started with anytone.py (for the AnyTone 5888UV), extracted out some common base classes, and then implemented my new driver from there. It's all working but I'm still crossing t's, dotting i's, and I had to take a break from that. I'll see if I can finish up in the next day or two and get that all checked in. (Whether or not my PR is approved, you'll still be able to take a look at my code).
// Craig
BTW, the main difference between the AnyTone 5888UV and the PowerWerx DB750-X is that the latter has bank support and the bank number is stored with the memory flags (Channel in use, Skip & PSkip), changing the flags table from 4-bits per channel to 8 bits. Also, the latter has 750 channels vs. 758 for the former. In your case I don't see that scanning is supported at all, much less banks, so I wonder if you even have a flags table.
Anyway, watch for my PR soon.
It's been a couple months since I looked at code of all the Anytone drivers, but I don't recall the 5888 memory map looking similar to what I found in my DB20. IIRC, I used the 778 as my code base, but would have to look to be sure.
Scanning *is* supported on the DB20, you hit function-4 on the mic to scan. And you can lock out channels, I have NOAA weather in there but it skips that during scan. There are flags for things like compander and scrambler as well.
No banks or zones though, that would be nice (I really need a radio with them, why don't more mfgrs have that?!). With 500 channels on here, banks would be great for travel scanning. It does scan fairly quickly though, at least.
-g
On Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 1:10 AM Craig Jones via chirp_devel < chirp_devel@intrepid.danplanet.com> wrote:
Gary,
I took a quick look at the Anytone 779UV and it's probably pretty close to what I've been developing for the (Anytone-based) PowerWerx DB750-X.
I started with anytone.py (for the AnyTone 5888UV), extracted out some common base classes, and then implemented my new driver from there. It's all working but I'm still crossing t's, dotting i's, and I had to take a break from that. I'll see if I can finish up in the next day or two and get that all checked in. (Whether or not my PR is approved, you'll still be able to take a look at my code).
// Craig
BTW, the main difference between the AnyTone 5888UV and the PowerWerx DB750-X is that the latter has bank support and the bank number is stored with the memory flags (Channel in use, Skip & PSkip), changing the flags table from 4-bits per channel to 8 bits. Also, the latter has 750 channels vs. 758 for the former. In your case I don't see that scanning is supported at all, much less banks, so I wonder if you even have a flags table.
Anyway, watch for my PR soon.
-- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG antivirus software. www.avg.com _______________________________________________ chirp_devel mailing list chirp_devel@intrepid.danplanet.com http://intrepid.danplanet.com/mailman/listinfo/chirp_devel Developer docs: http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Developers
I stand corrected. I was going by screen shots of the official programming software and didn't see any SKIP/PSKIP.
On 7/20/2023 11:16 AM, Gary Pupurs wrote:
It's been a couple months since I looked at code of all the Anytone drivers, but I don't recall the 5888 memory map looking similar to what I found in my DB20. IIRC, I used the 778 as my code base, but would have to look to be sure.
Scanning *is* supported on the DB20, you hit function-4 on the mic to scan. And you can lock out channels, I have NOAA weather in there but it skips that during scan. There are flags for things like compander and scrambler as well.
No banks or zones though, that would be nice (I really need a radio with them, why don't more mfgrs have that?!). With 500 channels on here, banks would be great for travel scanning. It does scan fairly quickly though, at least.
-g
On Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 1:10 AM Craig Jones via chirp_devel chirp_devel@intrepid.danplanet.com wrote:
Gary, I took a quick look at the Anytone 779UV and it's probably pretty close to what I've been developing for the (Anytone-based) PowerWerx DB750-X. I started with anytone.py (for the AnyTone 5888UV), extracted out some common base classes, and then implemented my new driver from there. It's all working but I'm still crossing t's, dotting i's, and I had to take a break from that. I'll see if I can finish up in the next day or two and get that all checked in. (Whether or not my PR is approved, you'll still be able to take a look at my code). // Craig BTW, the main difference between the AnyTone 5888UV and the PowerWerx DB750-X is that the latter has bank support and the bank number is stored with the memory flags (Channel in use, Skip & PSkip), changing the flags table from 4-bits per channel to 8 bits. Also, the latter has 750 channels vs. 758 for the former. In your case I don't see that scanning is supported at all, much less banks, so I wonder if you even have a flags table. Anyway, watch for my PR soon. -- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG antivirus software. www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com> _______________________________________________ chirp_devel mailing list chirp_devel@intrepid.danplanet.com http://intrepid.danplanet.com/mailman/listinfo/chirp_devel Developer docs: http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Developers
participants (5)
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Andy Knitt -
Craig Jones -
Dan Smith -
Gary Pupurs -
Rick (AA0RD) DeWitt