Stefan Helander

Anytone AT-D878UV / AT-D578UV wishlist

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This is my wishlist for features / fixes for the Anytone AT-D878UV and AT-D587UV DMR radios. Comments, additions and suggestions are welcome, contact me on sm0rgm@helander.se. Maybe the Anytone people will read it 😉 I will submit it through my dealer as well, for them to forward to the Anytone developers.

  • In the analog APRS message, add the possibility to enter a code which will be replaced by the radio’s current frequency, mode etc so people who sees my APRS packet knows what frequency I am listening on, for example %QRV1 will be replaced by the frequency, mode etc receiver 1 is set to. And %QRV2 will be the corresponding for receiver 2 in my radio. For example, if receiver 1 is set to 434.650 MHz DMR, CC04, TS2 the analog APRS will become “434.650 CC01 TS2”. And if it is set to for example 145.600 MHz FM it would become “145.600 FM”.
  • Make APRS Voice Alert work. The problem is that CTCSS filtering is done before AX.25 APRS decoding. Turn them around, so AX.25 APRS decoding is done before CTCSS filtering. Doing that, Voice Alert would work well on the Anytone since you can select no CTCSS for the APRS transmission but select CTCSS, both TX and RX for the APRS monitoring channel, which also will be used when you press PTT to make a voice alert. (Today, if I set CTCSS RX filter to 136.5 Hz in europe or 100 Hz in US, no APRS will be received at all.)
  • Scanning. When scanning and the scan stops on a channel with traffic, it would be very nice if the radio stayed on that channel when pressing exit to stop scan. Now it goes back the the channel that was selected when scanning started and I have to manually go to the channel with traffic. Also a quick press on the PTT should stop the scanning on the current channel.
  • Roaming. Please bring back so the radio displays which channel it is roaming on. This was the case in early firmwares but disappeared, so now it just displays the channel that was selected when roaming was started. Which means that on a roaming channel, I have no idea which repeater I am using or even which band I am transmitting on. Useless! I know there was a problem if there were more than one channel in the roaming zone with the same freqency, CC etc, the first one in the list matching was displayed even if it was the wrong one. Still, this is better than now knowing at all.
APRS on aprs.fi
Stefan Helander

Analog vs digital APRS

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There is actually no such thing as “analog” APRS. The traditional APRS over AX.25 on 144.800 MHz (or 145.390 MHz in other parts of the word) is actually defined as a digital mode.

However, Anytone has a possibility in their radios choose wether to send APRS over AX.25 or as position data over the DMR channel. This settings can be found in MENU -> APRS -> Upload Type, “A -Aprs” for APRS over AX.25 or “D – Aprs” for using the DMR. In Anytone they call these modes “Analog APRS” and “Digital APRS”.

APRS over AX.25 – “analog” APRS

In this mode positions are transmitted on a simplex channel (144.800 MHz in IARU region 1) and can be received by anyone in range. The packets can be repeated by digitpeaters (WIDE1 for local “fill in” digitpeaters and WIDE2 for wide coverage digipeaters). If the packet hits a digitpeater with an I-gate it is transported into the APRS-IS system and can be seen in aprs.fi.

The traditional APRS over AX.25 packet radio has many more functions than just position reporting, such as telemetry, weather reports, messaging etc etc. If your radio is capable of receiving APRS you can also see other hams in the area (position, distance, direction etc).

APRS over DMR – “digital” APRS

In this mode, the radio uses the built in function in the DMR specfication to transmit position data. When this position data reaches the Brandmeister servers it is converted to APRS and fed into the APRS-IS system and can be seen on aprs.fi.

APRS over DMR is limited to only position data so if your goal is to just show up on aprs.fi, this can be the mode of choice for you. You miss out on all other features of APRS when using DMR or “digital” APRS.

If you look at the APRS menu on the Anytone for example, the APRS SMS function is only availible for “Analog APRS”.

APRS SMS only in
APRS SMS not availible in “Digital APRS” (over DMR)

For me, I choose the “old school” APRS over AX.25 all days in the week 🙂