AnyTone AT-D868UV impressions
Now that they're starting to pop up in other stores and such, I thought it would be a good time to release some impressions of the unit from someone formerly using Motorola gear for DMR, and later CSI products as well.
To be upfront, I ordered mine from Jerry at Connect Systems when he announced the second batch being ordered. This is the "revision 2" hardware which allowed some future expansion. My current setup is Firmware 2.0, Hardware 1.10, and using CPS 1.14
The radio itself is a nice feel, around the size of a CS750, and is almost XPR7550 thickness with the 3100mah battery on the back. The screen offers nice brightness and font size for my eyes, but my current disappointment is that while channel names and Scan List names can be 16 characters, Zone names are limited to (I think) 12... making my programming a little harder since I need to adapt things a little more than I have been used to.
The audio on this thing is LOUD and crisp - no issues of it sounding muddy or garbled. I have done my informal comparison through my system's Last Heard page, and the Echotest server and have no issues with either a shout or whisper being heard in echo. Since I have only had it fully programmed for the past day, I haven't gotten a QSO with it yet to really know.
Otherwise... I love the dual band aspect and the handiness of the radio. While I see many options I would like to see refined or added, I stay hopeful since Jerry's CSI radio page on Facebook has an AnyTone engineer monitoring the comments and being a liaison to hopefully later CPS and firmware releases... but let me get into the issues with the radio as it sits today:
1) GPS lock is WEAK inside a home or vehicle. As I am sitting here the screen cuts on every minute or so to tell me its gotten a GPS fix. I don't have a use for GPS on my current system (yet), so it will probably get turned off but that is a nagging issue for me - either on the screen end or the GPS itself.
2) VHF quieting issue in some radios. Apparently I have one of the "unfortunate"ones, but it seems on full backlight at certain VHF frequencies, the radio itself can be heard making a buzz/click in monitor mode which means something is not isolated right, or can be tuned better in the SDR end of the radio.
3) Unable to change tones for DMR transmit/receive. I have a generic beep/boop kind of tone that indicates transmit or receive - but nothing to tell me unable to TX except a VERY brief message on the screen for "repeater not found". I would like to see all that changed. Also, TX tone can be selected for digital or analog, but not RX tone - so I am on an analog channel at this moment and every repeater kerchunk results in a beep from the radio as well... annoying.
4) The CPS is straight up disastrous in current form. I like the attempt at the form of it, where it is almost CHIRP-like spreadsheet style for programming of channels and such... but in operation it is a mess since clicking on a line brings up a dialog box for the data, which needs some refinement of its own... the list goes on. Current CPS release has an odd bug where typing the name of something in and pressing the spacebar puts the cursor at the beginning of the field so you need to consciously type things like Yoda to make sure they get input currently. Other than that I have noticed uploading the codeplug to the radio and then later reading it back to the computer leads to some fields being changed on their own - that if you don't double-check you'll have things changed you didn't intend to.
So far I think it is on the right path to being a GREAT radio and CPS combination but I think any of us with the radio right now are most certainly a beta tester for the market. But with that being said, I enjoy the radio a LOT more than the GD-77 and MD-2017 offerings on the market right now in terms of design.
Now that they're starting to pop up in other stores and such, I thought it would be a good time to release some impressions of the unit from someone formerly using Motorola gear for DMR, and later CSI products as well.
To be upfront, I ordered mine from Jerry at Connect Systems when he announced the second batch being ordered. This is the "revision 2" hardware which allowed some future expansion. My current setup is Firmware 2.0, Hardware 1.10, and using CPS 1.14
The radio itself is a nice feel, around the size of a CS750, and is almost XPR7550 thickness with the 3100mah battery on the back. The screen offers nice brightness and font size for my eyes, but my current disappointment is that while channel names and Scan List names can be 16 characters, Zone names are limited to (I think) 12... making my programming a little harder since I need to adapt things a little more than I have been used to.
The audio on this thing is LOUD and crisp - no issues of it sounding muddy or garbled. I have done my informal comparison through my system's Last Heard page, and the Echotest server and have no issues with either a shout or whisper being heard in echo. Since I have only had it fully programmed for the past day, I haven't gotten a QSO with it yet to really know.
Otherwise... I love the dual band aspect and the handiness of the radio. While I see many options I would like to see refined or added, I stay hopeful since Jerry's CSI radio page on Facebook has an AnyTone engineer monitoring the comments and being a liaison to hopefully later CPS and firmware releases... but let me get into the issues with the radio as it sits today:
1) GPS lock is WEAK inside a home or vehicle. As I am sitting here the screen cuts on every minute or so to tell me its gotten a GPS fix. I don't have a use for GPS on my current system (yet), so it will probably get turned off but that is a nagging issue for me - either on the screen end or the GPS itself.
2) VHF quieting issue in some radios. Apparently I have one of the "unfortunate"ones, but it seems on full backlight at certain VHF frequencies, the radio itself can be heard making a buzz/click in monitor mode which means something is not isolated right, or can be tuned better in the SDR end of the radio.
3) Unable to change tones for DMR transmit/receive. I have a generic beep/boop kind of tone that indicates transmit or receive - but nothing to tell me unable to TX except a VERY brief message on the screen for "repeater not found". I would like to see all that changed. Also, TX tone can be selected for digital or analog, but not RX tone - so I am on an analog channel at this moment and every repeater kerchunk results in a beep from the radio as well... annoying.
4) The CPS is straight up disastrous in current form. I like the attempt at the form of it, where it is almost CHIRP-like spreadsheet style for programming of channels and such... but in operation it is a mess since clicking on a line brings up a dialog box for the data, which needs some refinement of its own... the list goes on. Current CPS release has an odd bug where typing the name of something in and pressing the spacebar puts the cursor at the beginning of the field so you need to consciously type things like Yoda to make sure they get input currently. Other than that I have noticed uploading the codeplug to the radio and then later reading it back to the computer leads to some fields being changed on their own - that if you don't double-check you'll have things changed you didn't intend to.
So far I think it is on the right path to being a GREAT radio and CPS combination but I think any of us with the radio right now are most certainly a beta tester for the market. But with that being said, I enjoy the radio a LOT more than the GD-77 and MD-2017 offerings on the market right now in terms of design.