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Anytone AT-D868

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NavyBOFH

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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.
 

chief21

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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.

Thanks for posting your review. Thus far, the biggest issue that I have is the "mystery signal" that can be heard on certain VHF analog frequencies when the backlight is on, but totally disappears when the backlight goes off.

I also can't seem to find a setting that turns the backlight on when a transmission comes across or when the scan stops on a signal.

Also, FYI, there is a newer firmware available (2.02)

-John AC4JK
 

NavyBOFH

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Thanks for posting your review. Thus far, the biggest issue that I have is the "mystery signal" that can be heard on certain VHF analog frequencies when the backlight is on, but totally disappears when the backlight goes off.

I also can't seem to find a setting that turns the backlight on when a transmission comes across or when the scan stops on a signal.

Also, FYI, there is a newer firmware available (2.02)

-John AC4JK

That was a typo by me - I updated mine to 2.02 the day I got it... I don't know how I missed that.

The backlight issue is easily one of the most annoying since I am not sure if that is a firmware fix or if it will have to be a send-in replacement of the radio.

The rest of the issues are all firmware polish and CPS debugging. Easily both need a good amount of attention to be to the point where this will blow a TYT or even CSI's own radios out of the water. I don't need promiscuous mode scanning or other crazy features, but I DO like the FPP and the radio to function like a Motorola without a Motorola price tag. Maybe community support will come around for it and the CPS can just be a vessel for loading/reading the codeplug - but holy hell I cannot express how annoying some of the CPS bugs are.

Here's some additional points I find at times:

1) CPS - if you write your codeplug and then immediately read it back to CPS, half my scan lists are missing. If I write it back to the radio - goodbye scan lists that weren't listed. Same goes for the contact list - so EVERY time I write the codeplug I need to do it from an archive file I work on first and then load it into the radio, keeping the "last good" aside. That also means it takes FOREVER because I am loading a ~4Mb contact list every time.

2)Firmware - if I key up too quick in reply to someone's QSO, the radio sometimes gets stuck in a TX loop or an RX loop. If its a TX loop - I need to power cycle the radio to clear it... RX loop I need to change channels/zones and then go back to where I was.

3) Scan speed - I think I can sit there spinning the channel knob at a comfortable speed faster than the thing scans. That means you miss a LOT of a conversation at times. I am talking 1 second per digital channel and 0.5 second per analog... not sure why digital is longer but it is. My zone of 21 channels takes FOREVER to cycle.

4) CPS - certain changes to parts of the codeplug and then writing to the radio will result in my first zone/first channel being appended to EACH zone. I haven't figured out what triggered that but it happened and hasn't happened since.

5) CPS - to be fair I did a LOT of my editing in CSV files and then imported them to the codeplug. However if I look at the channel list, everything appears to be in the right spot. Open the zone or scan list part to add channels to either function - and you can find the channelized list goes 121, 122, 401, 402, 403, 123, etc... Don't know if that means there's a database issue but it is DAMN infuriating when I added 6 analog repeaters to add to three local zones, and had to scroll around forever to find them in the list since they weren't at the bottom where they were on the channel window. As for scrolling - doesn't work in half the program anyway...

I will keep going but this is just as a record of issues found and hopeful resolutions... and partially my own tracking of these issues so when new CPS or firmware comes out I can see if things are really being fixed enough to say I spent my money foolishly or not.
 

10-75

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I have the 868UVE. I bought mine from Connect Systems - Great service. That being said, the hardware is great but the firmware and programming software needs a lot of work. I bought it because it has Two-Tone decode. The problem is it encodes up to 24 tone sets but will only decode one which for me was a big disappointment. I'm hoping they make it so you can decode 24 sets as well. The audio is good and so far, the battery life is good too although I have not done any transmitting with it. I have used it to successfully decode some Trbo transmissions and the audio was really good. If they re-wrote the firmware so you could set it up like a talk-back pager and market it as a different model, they could sell a ton of these to FD's.
 

xilix

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Quick question about this radio: The specs indicate 400-480 Mhz coverage. By any chance will it receive up to 484 Mhz ?

Also, can the radio be programmed from the keypad for ham use ?
 

10-75

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You can't program above 480 Mhz.... And yes, with some effort you can program through the keypad....
 
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Is this radio capable of receiving two signals at the same time? Does it have two real VFOs? Or, is it dual-watch like a baofengs where the radio scans the two channels it displays on the screen? Are any of the other dual-band dmr radios capable of this?
 

msingewald

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Is this radio capable of receiving two signals at the same time? Does it have two real VFOs? Or, is it dual-watch like a baofengs where the radio scans the two channels it displays on the screen? Are any of the other dual-band dmr radios capable of this?

Only one at a time. Only other radio that works as you describe would be the Kenwood radios. Very expensive, but can do what you are looking for.
 

chief21

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I've had my D868 for about a week. The latest FW upgrade (2.17) has vastly improved the usability of this little radio and the manufacturer seems anxious to work out any remaining issues. I also have a TYT MD-380 and I must say that I'm liking the Anytone more and more.

John AC4JK
 
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