We’ve recently written about the Quansheng UV-K5 multiband radio which supports experimental firmware to work in a wider 18 MHz – 1300 MHz frequency range than with the stock firmware so it can be used for amateur radio, air traffic control, Citizens Band (CB) radio, and other fun stuff.
But flashing the firmware requires downloading the manufacturer’s Windows-only programming software and customizations are provided through multiple firmware files. But it has now become much easier to flash the firmware for Quansheng devices thanks to the work of whosmatt who developed the UVMOD web interface using WebSerial to flash the firmware and even customize it from Windows or Linux.
The interface supports Quansheng UV-K5, UV-K6, UV-K5(8), and UV-5R Plus handheld radios, and you’ll need a web browser that supports the WebSerial API to flash the firmware directly from the web browser directly, which means only the desktop versions of Chrome, Edge, and Opera are supported at the time of writing. You can still create a patched firmware from Firefox or Safari, and save it for later or flash it manually with the Windows tool.
The list of customization is fairly long from aesthetic changes like battery icon and font variations to changes to the radio (Disable Tx, frequency steps, frequency range…) and other hardware parts such as an increase to the microphone gain, enabling the SWD port or changing the backlight duration.
You can give it a try by going to the UVMOD website. As a side note, If you’re using Ubuntu, you may need to add yourself to the dialout group or you’ll get some permission issues:
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1 |
sudo adduser $USER dialout |
or
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sudo usermod -aG dialout $USER |
You’ll also need to reboot the computer since logging out and logging in was not enough when I tried another WebSerial-based interface for an e-paper display earlier this web with Ubuntu 22.04.3.
Via Hackaday and thanks to Lalith for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Chirp[https://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home] also supports this radio in case you want to do most of what these other tools do like programming the memories and menu options. It’s OSS, of course.