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armel / uv-k5-firmware-custom

This is a fork of Egzumer https://github.com/egzumer/uv-k5-firmware-custom
Apache License 2.0
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Open re-implementation of the Quansheng UV-K5/K6/5R v2.1.27 firmware

This repository is a fork of Egzumer custom firmware, who was a merge of OneOfEleven custom firmware with fagci spectrum analizer plus my few changes.

All is a cloned and customized version of DualTachyon's open firmware found here ... a cool achievement !

[!NOTE] EN - About Chirp, as many others firmwares, you need to use a dedicated driver available on this repository.

FR - A propos de Chirp, comme beaucoup d'autres firmwares, vous devez utiliser un pilote dédié disponible sur ce dépôt.

[!WARNING] EN - THIS FIRMWARE HAS NO REAL BRAIN. PLEASE USE YOUR OWN. Use this firmware at your own risk (entirely). There is absolutely no guarantee that it will work in any way shape or form on your radio(s), it may even brick your radio(s), in which case, you'd need to buy another radio. Anyway, have fun.

FR - CE FIRMWARE N'A PAS DE VÉRITABLE CERVEAU. VEUILLEZ UTILISER LE VÔTRE. Utilisez ce firmware à vos risques et périls. Il n'y a absolument aucune garantie qu'il fonctionnera d'une manière ou d'une autre sur votre (vos) radio(s), il peut même bousiller votre (vos) radio(s), dans ce cas, vous devrez acheter une autre radio. Quoi qu'il en soit, amusez-vous bien.

[!CAUTION] EN - I recommend to backup your eeprom with k5prog before playing with alternative firmwares. It's a good reflex to have.

FR - Je recommande de sauvegarder votre eeprom avec k5prog avant de jouer avec des firmwares alternatifs. C'est un bon réflexe à avoir.

Donations

Special thanks to Jean-Cyrille F6IWW, Fabrice 14RC123, David F4BPP, Olivier 14RC206, Frédéric F4ESO, Stéphane F5LGW, Jorge Ornelas, Laurent F4AXK, Christophe Morel, Clayton W0LED, Pierre Antoine F6FWB, Jean-Claude 14FRS3306, Thierry F4GVO, Eric F1NOU, PricelessToolkit, Ady M6NYJ, Tom McGovern, Joseph Roth, Pierre-Yves Colin, Frank DJ7FG, Marcel Testaz, Brian Frobisher, Yannick F4JFO, Paolo Bussola, Dirk DL8DF, Szőke Levente, Bernard-Michel Herrera, Jérôme Saintespes and Paul Davies for their donations. That’s so kind of them. Thanks so much 🙏🏻

Table of Contents

Main features:

Main features from Egzumer:

Up to date manual is available in the Wiki section

Radio performance

Please note that the Quansheng UV-Kx radios are not professional quality transceivers, their performance is strictly limited. The RX front end has no track-tuned band pass filtering at all, and so are wide band/wide open to any and all signals over a large frequency range.

Using the radio in high intensity RF environments will most likely make reception anything but easy (AM mode will suffer far more than FM ever will), the receiver simply doesn't have a great dynamic range, which results in distorted AM audio with stronger RX'ed signals. There is nothing more anyone can do in firmware/software to improve that, once the RX gain adjustment I do (AM fix) reaches the hardwares limit, your AM RX audio will be all but non-existent (just like Quansheng's firmware). On the other hand, FM RX audio will/should be fine.

But, they are nice toys for the price, fun to play with.

Compiler

arm-none-eabi GCC version 10.3.1 is recommended, which is the current version on Ubuntu 22.04.03 LTS. Other versions may generate a flash file that is too big. You can get an appropriate version from: https://developer.arm.com/downloads/-/gnu-rm

clang may be used but isn't fully supported. Resulting binaries may also be bigger. You can get it from: https://releases.llvm.org/download.html

Building

Github Codespace build method

This is the least demanding option as you don't have to install enything on your computer. All you need is Github account.

  1. Go to https://github.com/armel/uv-k5-firmware-custom
  2. Click green Code button
  3. Change tab from Local to Codespace
  4. Click green Create codespace on main button
  1. Open Makefile
  2. Edit build options, save Makefile changes
  3. Run ./compile-with-docker.sh in terminal window
  4. Open folder compiled-firmware
  5. Right click firmware.packed.bin
  6. Click Download, now you should have a firmware on your computer that you can proceed to flash on your radio. You can use online flasher

Docker build method

If you have docker installed you can use compile-with-docker.bat (Windows) or compile-with-docker.sh (Linux/Mac), the output files are created in compiled-firmware folder. This method gives significantly smaller binaries, I've seen differences up to 1kb, so it can fit more functionalities this way. The challenge can be (or not) installing docker itself.

Windows environment build method

  1. Open windows command line and run: 
    winget install -e -h git.git Python.Python.3.8 GnuWin32.Make
winget install -e -h Arm.GnuArmEmbeddedToolchain -v "10 2021.10"
  2. Close command line, open a new one and run: 
    pip install --user --upgrade pip
pip install crcmod
mkdir c:\projects & cd /D c:/projects
git clone https://github.com/armel/uv-k5-firmware-custom.git
  3. From now on you can build the firmware by going to c:\projects\uv-k5-firmware-custom and running win_make.bat or by running a command line: 
    cd /D c:\projects\uv-k5-firmware-custom
win_make.bat
  4. To reset the repository and pull new changes run (!!! it will delete all your changes !!!): 
    cd /D c:\projects\uv-k5-firmware-custom
git reset --hard & git clean -fd & git pull

I've left some notes in the win_make.bat file to maybe help with stuff.

Credits

Many thanks to various people:

Other sources of information

ludwich66 - Quansheng UV-K5 Wiki
amnemonic - tools and sources of information

License

Copyright 2023 Dual Tachyon https://github.com/DualTachyon

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

Example changes/updates

Here are a few photos.

Main Only and Dual RX Respond
Main Only and Dual RX Respond
Main Only and Dual RX Respond (invert mode)
Main Only and Dual RX Respond (invert mode)
Some new menu entries
Some new menu entries
Main Only and Spectrum Analyzer
Main Only and Spectrum Analyzer