MD-380 Hacked?

[CQDX]

Found this on Facebook;

http://www.va3xpr.net/hams-hack-110-dmr-radio-allow-support-d-star-p25-system-fusion/

Anyone heard about this?

 

[kc2obw]

Ha! How long is it taking Jerry over at CS to accomplish the same with the CS7000?

 

[CQDX]

Yeah no kidding. I think Jerry is a dreamer, that's for sure. I'm certainly not holding my breath at all.

As crappy as the MD-380 is, it'd make a damn nice DMR scanner.

 

[Forts]

Much more detailed info is linked from this story: http://hackaday.com/2016/01/19/shmoocon-2016-reverse-engineering-cheap-chinese-radio-firmware/

 

[wiredwrx]

Much more detailed info is linked from this story: http://hackaday.com/2016/01/19/shmoocon-2016-reverse-engineering-cheap-chinese-radio-firmware/

I saw it on Hackaday today as well. An interesting read to say the least, though some of it rightfully went right over my head, but the potential seems impressive, especially for such an inexpensive product.

 

[b16a2]

Travis knows his stuff, I'm surprised he was able to read the protected STM32 processor. Its great he openly shared his findings in the linked PDF. Very cool

 

[Alpha]

The TL;DR of it all is that they have reverse-engineered the firmware for the MD-380, and now are looking for people with the expertise to add P25, D-STAR, and C4FM Fusion to it. Another nice feature they can very easily add is a "promiscuous mode" for DMR, like "Digital CSQ" for P25 - allowing it to decode any/all talkgroups on a given repeater.

They have just gotten the decoding process done, so it will probably be a while before the radio does any of that neat new stuff, but it does sound like they are on a solid track toward those goals.

 

[kc2obw]

One feature I would like to see, and it should be possible is the ability to have mixed mode receive. We have a DMR machine that we run in DMM, it would be nice to be able to monitor both analog and digital on the same channel.

 

[twojaygee]

A bit of Googling led me to https://github.com/pchickey/md380-re/tree/master/datasheets where he has data sheets for the HR C5000 baseband chip and schematics for the MD-380. Unfortunately the C5000 datasheet is largely in Chinese but my impression is that it is very much DMR focused so support for other modes may not be a trivial exercise ......

 

[no7rf]

The CS-750 already has digital monitor (digital CSQ) and displays the timeslot, RID and TID as well as spitting out the audio. Though pricier, it is arguably a better piece of hardware not relegated to Rx only. Great radio to sniff out the setting when only knowing the frequency and with FPP to complement that ability. I have two at the desk on battery eliminators listening to both timeslots and all 59 TG's on a local 8300 with a blown PA. Nope, the audio is not up very high either.

The TL;DR of it all is that they have reverse-engineered the firmware for the MD-380, and now are looking for people with the expertise to add P25, D-STAR, and C4FM Fusion to it. Another nice feature they can very easily add is a "promiscuous mode" for DMR, like "Digital CSQ" for P25 - allowing it to decode any/all talkgroups on a given repeater.

 

[Forts]

The firmware patches are available now from his Github site...

 

[radiosification]

I can confirm this works well. I've applied the firmware to my MD-380 already and it does hear private calls as well as groups that aren't programmed in. Any groups that aren't programmed in show as if they're on the default talkgroup for that channel though.

 

[Mars]

I can confirm this works well. I've applied the firmware to my MD-380 already and it does hear private calls as well as groups that aren't programmed in. Any groups that aren't programmed in show as if they're on the default talkgroup for that channel though.

Sure would be nice if it would display the TG/RID data, kind of like "engineering mode" or something.

 

[radiosification]

Well the firmware is available for anyone to edit now, hopefully someone who knows how to will add some nice features such as that.