Are there any publicly available firmware dumps/blobs we might be able to reverse engineer?
mschuster91•18h ago
The question is, do we want this? Do we really want to support what these chips are doing to the spectrum? The mentioned Baofengs (or variants of them) for example are already banned in Germany [1] and Switzerland [2] due to their piss poor output harmonics filtering. If you look closely, even more reputable radios like Anytone blast out awful harmonics.
And IMHO that's a fundamental, unavoidable problem with the design of these chips. You can't just go and do everything on a single IC with barely any passives for filtering.
And that's ignoring the question if they actually got a proper license for the vocoder - AMBE is still under patent protection until end of this year AFAIK. Honestly I'd be surprised if they did, but it's yet another thing to be aware of when importing these chips...
> Do we really want to support what these chips are doing to the spectrum?
So a 5W Baofeng outputs 0.000272W on the 5th harmonic when transmitting at 2M.
Is it out of spec for commercial (Part 90) use in the US? No. Is it out of spec for amateur use? Yes.
But does it actually matter? Probably not. 272µW at 576Mhz is probably not going to bother anyone. Especially not when transmitting infrequently as most HT users will.
My personal opinion is that some people dislike the idea that people may enter a hobby without serious financial commitment. Not having to spend $300 on a HT means that unserious people might want to use a radio to talk about life instead of a radio to talk about radios.
> My personal opinion is that some people dislike the idea that people may enter a hobby without serious financial commitment. Not having to spend $300 on a HT means that unserious people might want to use a radio to talk about life instead of a radio to talk about radios.
Agreed! But nevertheless, I'd say that adding a bit better filtering would go a loooong way, as would better quality control - and it wouldn't raise the price of the device too much.
Baofengs et al are a somewhat decent way to get started and gain voice practice - I started on a Quansheng myself - but they're not useful for anything else than 2m/70cm repeater nets.
synack•18h ago
mschuster91•18h ago
And IMHO that's a fundamental, unavoidable problem with the design of these chips. You can't just go and do everything on a single IC with barely any passives for filtering.
And that's ignoring the question if they actually got a proper license for the vocoder - AMBE is still under patent protection until end of this year AFAIK. Honestly I'd be surprised if they did, but it's yet another thing to be aware of when importing these chips...
[1] https://www.funkamateur.de/nachrichtendetails/items/vertrieb...
[2] https://uska.ch/bakom-liste-nicht-konforme-geraete/
avidiax•15h ago
So a 5W Baofeng outputs 0.000272W on the 5th harmonic when transmitting at 2M.
Is it out of spec for commercial (Part 90) use in the US? No. Is it out of spec for amateur use? Yes.
But does it actually matter? Probably not. 272µW at 576Mhz is probably not going to bother anyone. Especially not when transmitting infrequently as most HT users will.
My personal opinion is that some people dislike the idea that people may enter a hobby without serious financial commitment. Not having to spend $300 on a HT means that unserious people might want to use a radio to talk about life instead of a radio to talk about radios.
https://www.ad5gg.com/2016/09/28/baofeng-uv-5r-harmonics/
mschuster91•15h ago
Agreed! But nevertheless, I'd say that adding a bit better filtering would go a loooong way, as would better quality control - and it wouldn't raise the price of the device too much.
Baofengs et al are a somewhat decent way to get started and gain voice practice - I started on a Quansheng myself - but they're not useful for anything else than 2m/70cm repeater nets.