Introduction

CHIRP driver for UV-K5/K6/5R radios running Egzumer firmware

This is a modification of a driver created by:
(c) 2023 Jacek Lipkowski sq5bpf@lipkowski.org

Licensed cc-by-sa-4.0

How to use

Important

This driver is added to official CHIRP release.

Choose UV-K5 radio model in the CHIRP download window. It will automatically recognize egzumer firmware if it is on your radio, and all extra options will be available. You should see radio model changed to UV-K5 egzumer in the "Upload to radio..." function window.

If you find some issues that are clearly related to this driver report them here and not to the CHIRP team.

You can also use development version of the driver uvk5_EGZUMER.py (right click, "Save link as...") and load it to CHIRP manually.

Important

This driver is an extension of the UV-K5 driver that was modified to accept driver extensions. You have to use CHIRP version that was released after 01.02.2024 that contains the correct base driver.

Loading with menu

go to menu Help and turn on Developer mode
Restart CHIRP
Go to menu File, Load module...
Choose downloaded uvk5_EGZUMER.py, new radio will appear in Quansheng section in download/upload function.

Loading with CHIRP input argument

Create a shortcut to CHIRP program
Edit shortcut settings, in target field add at the end --module PATH_TO_DRIVER (replace PATH_TO_DRIVER with a real path) example : "C:\Program Files (x86)\CHIRP\chirpwx.exe" --module C:\chirp_egzumer\uvk5_EGZUMER.py
Run CHIRP with the shortcut, it will automatically load the driver.

Custom channel settings

By default CHIRP shows only default channel options, that are universal for all types radios. You can see and change custom channel settings by going to menu View and turning on Show extra fields, this will show more options in the Memories tab.

Custom firmware build options

This driver supports custom Egzumer firmware builds and detects which options have been used. Disabled options will be hidden in CHIRP. This only works if the configuration was read from a specific radio. You can use configuration files from other radios with different build options, but unsupported settings will be reset to defaults on the target radio.

Calibration settings

Those setting are not uploaded to the radio by default. If you make some changes in the calibration and you want to save it, you have to enable the Upload calibration option before uploading. If this is enabled only the calibration part of the configuration data is sent to the radio, without channels and other settings.

Use this option at your own risk. Make a backup of the calibration first! Some settings are calibrated at the factory and each radio has different and unique calibration data. You will not be able to restore those setting using some other radios settings. Be carefull not to use CHIRP config file that was downloaded from other radio. Each CHIRP config contains full EEPROM dump, it always did, even the original UV-K5 driver did this, so if you have some old config saved it also contains calibration section and can be used to restore the calibration, but the best way to make a backup is to use software that doesn't depend on CHIRP driver, like k5prog-win.

Calibration settings are raw values read from the EEPROM, not recalculated to dBm, dB or any particular units. All the settings are presented as they were in the stock Quansheng firmware. Not all calibration settings are used the same way by the egzumer firmware:

Squelch - sensitivity is doubled if ENABLE_SQUELCH_MORE_SENSITIVE is enabled (enabled by default)
Microphone sensitivity - not used at all
RSSI levels - only used for small RSSI bar indicator if the firmware is built with the custom S-meter disabled (ENABLE_RSSI_BAR = 0)
TX power - if built with ENABLE_REDUCE_LOW_MID_TX_POWER then medium power is further divided by 3, low power is divided by 5 (not enabled by default)
Battery - only level 3 is used