[From May 29th] New ongoing "Development" version has been created

[VK3KYY]

I have put an experimental version of the new firmware onto this server.

This firmware is licensed under the BSD 3 Clause + non commericial license which I posted last week.

For legal reasons the installation is different from the previous versions.

1. There is a different CPS

https://www.opengd77.com/downloads/CPS/

Use the latest available version in that folder.

2. The firmware no longer contains parts of the official firmware

And because it therefore does not contain the AMBE codec it is no longer necessary to encrypt the file into a SGL file.
Hence the new firmware is just a plain binary file (.bin)

As DMR requires the AMBE codec, the CPS now combines the OpenGD77 firmware file with the official firmware before uploading to the radio.
But in order for this to happen, users must first download and unzip the latest version of the official firmware (version 4.3.6) and extract the official firmware file.

The instructions for this are described here

https://www.opengd77.com/static/firmwar ... lation.php

3.For legal reasons the license and readme text documents are required to be distributed with the firmware file.
So the firmware file is now zipped into a package containing these other files

The zip files can be downloaded from here

https://www.opengd77.com/downloads/rele ... /firmware/

Note. The JA_ versions are Japanese only

4.The Voice pompts have changed in this version

https://www.opengd77.com/downloads/rele ... e_prompts/

5. The source code and build tools are available here

https://www.opengd77.com/downloads/rele ... and_tools/

I will not be hosting the souce code on Github

Legal
Substantial portions of the source code have been written since the last public release.
The only code remaining is copyright a small group of people including Kai DG4KLU, me VK3KYY, Daniel F1RMB, Alex DL4LEX and Colin G4EML.

Code by minor contributors has been rewritten to overcome copyright and GPL License problems.
The Hotspot code has been rewritten, and the code from mbelib has also been rewritten, to overcome GPL and license conflicts.

I have contacted all major contributors and they have all agreed to the license change to BSD 3 Clause + non commerical

The User Guide is no longer part of the source code, nor are any of the technical documents, which we didnt write, nor are the build tools etc

Technical

The firmware has been updated to use the latest version of the official firmware, (v4.3.6) which can be downloaded from Radioddity's server, rather than the old version (3.1.1) which was difficult to obtain. This was a technically complex process and involved finding the memory location of the 100 + AMBE related functions in the official firmware.

Many sections of code e.g. the code from mbelib have been optimised as part of the rewrite.

Some new features and changes

There were a number of new features in the pipeline before the GPL problems occurred in March, and these features are now in his new release

The most major change is to DMR ID handleing, as the data is now compressed by 25% and also the memory map in the flash memory has been changed to allow use of more of the Flash memory, including the option to use the Voice Prompts area for additional DMR ID storage.

Also on the DM1801 the larger Flash memory (2Mb instead of 1Mb) can be used to store even more DMR ID's

And the number of characters for each DMR ID has been increased to a maximum of 50, which includes the callsign and the name and location etc.

There is a new feature, from Daniel, called Scan on Boot
And another new feature from Daniel where a different Radio DMR ID can be assigned to each channel.

I'll leave it to Daniel to post information about these.


Updates:

• June 13th 2021 - public beta
• July 11th 2021 - release

[W1AEX]

Roger,

Both of my GD77 radios are updated and running fine. I love Daniel's "scan on boot" feature! I'm planning to play with the added DMR-ID features after another cup of coffee this morning.

Thank you to all involved with the restructuring of this amazing project.

73, Rob W1AEX

[Edit] DMR-ID programming with the new CPS works very well. With the new compression and the option to use the voice prompt memory space the DMR ID parameters allow for 90494 contacts with 6 characters displayed. Note that RadioID.net does not have the option to set time limits to exclude IDs that have been inactive. For US operators the settings below will allow 88813 contacts (the current US database according to RadioID.net) to be loaded. Using the TA/Ct/DB sequence in the Display Options seems to catch everyone (including my non-US friends) nicely where Talker Alias is allowed to pass through.

11 no time limit (loads 110xxx through 115xxx assignments)
31 no time limit (loads 310xxx through 318xxx assignments)

[kt4lh]

Amazing work to do so much refactoring, rewriting, and re-organizing in such a short period of time. Thank you everyone who has worked to keep this project alive. I'm sad I can't flash from Linux anymore but 100% understand why the new approach was needed; no more distribution of the official FW within OpenGD77. Perhaps though someone will update the Linux flash routines, I suppose there's no real reason that couldn't be done.

Again, one can't express enough thanks for continuing this project.

[F1RMB]

Hi,

Amazing work to do so much refactoring, rewriting, and re-organizing in such a short period of time. Thank you everyone who has worked to keep this project alive. I'm sad I can't flash from Linux anymore but 100% understand why the new approach was needed; no more distribution of the official FW within OpenGD77. Perhaps though someone will update the Linux flash routines, I suppose there's no real reason that couldn't be done.

Again, one can't express enough thanks for continuing this project.

Thanks. I don't understand why you can't flash from Linux, as I'm doing it daily.
Can you tell me more about this ?

EDIT: maybe you missed the standalone firmware loaders here


Cheers.
---
Daniel

[m1dyp]

all I can say is AWESOME, thank you very much, so much hard work, bit of a learning curve for an oldun like me, but its all up and running

[F1RMB]

Hi,

Here is a (probably incomplete) list of changes:

Features:

• Battery calibration: +/- 0.5V in steps of 0.1V.
• Eco Level 5 added.
• DMR ID Db:
  Larger record size (+ compression): 50 char, including the callsign.
  Larger storage: use the 2Mb flash chip on the DM-1801, VP storage area can be also used for this on all devices.
• Optional DMR ID per channel:
  It overrides the DMR ID defined of the transceiver, if set in the channel (Channel Details or in the CPS).
  DMR ID temporary override: like before, a temporary DMR ID can be set (cleared on power-cycle), but it also have a priority of the one defined in the current channel, if any.
  Entering an empty DMR ID, or 0, or the one defined on the transceiver removes that override.
  DMR ID priority is, from the higher to the lower: 1.Manual, 2. Channel, 3. Global
• Scan On Boot: this option, if enabled, will start on power-up the channel's scanning of the latest selected zone.

Bugfixes:

• DCS: squelch was opening it the code was matching, but regardless of the I or N.
• Channel details: Fix long press Left and Right on CSS entries.
• VFO Dual Watch: FM transmission weren't detected.
• Hotspot: was stopping transmitting when a network dropout was happening.
• GD-77S: the heart beat LED flashing was broken once the transceiver was in low energy mode.

I'm probably missing some changes/fixes, Roger will probably complete the list and details.


Cheers.
---
Daniel

[Ik0nwg]

you are my favorite heroes !!! THANK YOU
Ciao
Sal

[N1KY]

This is wonderful news! I know that behind the scenes you devs have done a tremendous amount of work to make this happen. Please know that the community appreciates it more than you may ever realize.

Hotspot: was stopping transmitting when a network dropout was happening.

Excellent! I can't wait to test this on my GD77 hotspot. For a long time I have kept it on an old firmware version that through trial and error I found has this problem less frequently. Now I have to check the user guide to see if eco levels work in hotspot mode.

Cheers!

[F1RMB]

Hi,

This is wonderful news! I know that behind the scenes you devs have done a tremendous amount of work to make this happen. Please know that the community appreciates it more than you may ever realize.

Hotspot: was stopping transmitting when a network dropout was happening.

Excellent! I can't wait to test this on my GD77 hotspot. For a long time I have kept it on an old firmware version that through trial and error I found has this problem less frequently. Now I have to check the user guide to see if eco levels work in hotspot mode.

Cheers!

Thanks.
Eco mode is disabled when the hotspot is running.


Cheers.
---
Daniel

[DU2XXR]

Thank you, Roger, Alex, and Daniel. Congrats to the community.