I've used Chirp for my HTs now for many years (thanks, developers!), and recently bought a Yaesu FTM6000 dual-band mobile. Its primary deficiency from my point of view is that it isn't supported by Chirp, for which reason I bought a third-party programming program and serial cable made by RT Systems.
I'm not a fan of their business model of "Spend another $60 for a different (but actually near-identical) programming utility for every one of your different radios," so I view this as a one-time thing, and a way to give back by achieving Chirp support for this model.
I would be delighted to use this equipment and my embedded hardware/software development skills to bring about Chirp support for this radio, but I would need some help from someone familiar with Chirp internals. In particular, my Python skills are rudimentary; I can write Python, but it's not my best language. Implementing this support on my own seems rather daunting.
Here's what I can do well:
- Run test cases for reading/writing configurations from and to the radio with the third-party software
- Intercept the serial data streams at either the USB driver level or the RS-232 serial link level (it's my understanding that this radio does indeed use RS-232 levels and async serial communications). Wireshark and logic analyzers are my friends!
- Analyze the serial data streams for this radio and compare them to samples of known Yaesu programming protocols for other models (I believe they tend to re-use the same protocol for many models)
- Compile and run test builds of a modified Chirp build from a Git repo and test them
Here's what I would need help with:
- Someone familiar with Python, the Chirp drivers, and ideally Yaesu's programming protocols, to work on the Python code to adapt an existing Chirp driver for the FTM6000.
Is there someone on the list who would be interested in working with me on adding support for this radio to Chirp?
Regards,
Steve Hersey
-- "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Clarke's Third Law
"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." -- Benford's Corollary
"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." -- Charles Stross, Dead Lies Dreaming
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.” -- Terry Pratchett