Hams hack $110 DMR radio to allow support for D-STAR, P25 and System Fusion

Hams have reverse engineered or “hacked” one of the most popular DMR radios on the market today – the Chinese made TYT MD-380, allowing for a fully open source firmware to be uploaded into the radio, allowing support for D-STAR, P25 and System Fusion.

FULL STORY

Don
VA3XFT

 

Ok, I'll say it: This is seriously bad@$$! Soon as I can find some free time, I got a little project now...

 

Unfortunately, the MD-380 hardware is garbage. It drifts timeslots on TDMA and has no front-end for RX. It will make an OK scanner for those want to monitor commercial DMR systems, but don't know the system parameters. For $110US, it's a very reasonable price for this application.

The firmware/hardware hack itself is a notable accomplishment. It's too bad those who are able, haven't tried hacking the Motorola XTS3000 or ASTRO Saber (now unsupported products) to do the similar things. Now those would make fine amateur radio transceivers which don't cause harmful interference to DMR systems.

Source: http://communications.support/threads/10541-Tytera-radios-junk?p=76334#post76334

 

Careful reading of the announcement says to me that they have not yet developed the code to do DSTAR, P25, or Fusion. Indeed, it says they are "looking for people" who can do this. So, unless you have some idea of how to program the radio to do those modes, I don't think you'll gain much yet. But, it does look like a promising possibility. I am still hoping we see something from CSI on their multimode radio at Dayton, and I'm aware of other groups who have reverse-engineered the AMBE vocoder, in anticipation of the patents expiring in the near future. An affordable multimode radio might be what's needed to get people off the fence and onto digital modes.

 

The hardware BARELY handles doing DMR correctly. I only see this turn into one big mess.

 

I guess we need to find a decent radio that something like this can be done, or force the B Boys to work together to get this done.

 

Is this a promotional ad?

 

According to the article, this ALLOWS.... but nothing has actually been made to work.... So, yes it sounds like a promotional ad.

 

Yes they still havent added the other modes yet however the people working on this are the same ones who are behind the rtl-sdr. I think they are plenty capable and if they feel that the hardware is capable I look forward to what they come up with.

 

Can you say VAPORWARE?

 

The price of the MD-380's have gone up significantly after this announcement.

 

these are really the more legitimate links

https://hackaday.com/tag/tytera-md-380/

https://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/pocorgtfo10.pdf

 

So far as I am aware, the Kenwood NX5000 series of radios are the only ones that can operate over more than one digital standard (aside from different flavors of P25 like phase 1 and 2, or conventional and trunking which many radios do). In their case NXDN and P25. All others are vaporware at this time. Some people declared it was impossible to have more than one digital standard in one radio but Kenwood is shipping these radios and they are in service. It's too bad that they don't offer other digital standards. Perhaps they will modify these radios to operate with other standards (DMR, D-Star, and Fusion) and offer them as an amateur product. Only Kenwood knows for sure. For the time being we just have to buy more radios. Kind of a pain though to carry four different HT's on your belt. Makes for an impressive ham shack or car install.

 

I guess I'm too cheap to buy into the digital VHF / UHF stuff just yet. Hasn't got me excited about it. Seems like the different standards should be able to be handled by some form of SDR - then, just a matter of licensing the protocals / codecs / etc. - show me a radio that can handle the modes all will get my money.

 

i just did it but my question how will it work on dstar what else needs 2 be done please email me im good on qrz