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Anytone Anytone 868 Promiscuous Mode Problem

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G8OEO

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Having played around with DSD Plus for some time I decided to try this newly bought handheld Anytone radio for casual listening to local commercial DMR transmissions.

Despite using a good external antenna (signals are pretty strong) and checking that audio was being transmitted simultaneously using DSD Plus I’m having problems getting the handheld to output any DMR audio apart from the occasional short burst of speech.

The Anytone is in VFO mode with the channel set up for DMR repeater operation (with the unused Tx frequency deliberately set over 1MHz higher than Rx ) and Digital Monitor switched ON (Double Slot, Any CC, Any ID, Slot Hold ON).
I also tried it in simplex mode but no luck there either.

I wonder if anyone has managed to use the 868 or 878 successfully for general DMR monitoring.
 
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G8OEO

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Yes I do see the green light and the signal strength shows the full 5 bars.

I get group, user, and slot updates on the display but hear audio for less than 1 in 4 transmissions. The display flashes as if attempting to decode during an audio transmission but only rarely succeeds in going properly over to the screen showing a call.

All the while DSD plus is happily decoding the audio supplied by another scanner.

For the record the firmware is ver 2.38
 
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TassieJay

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Lots of variables in play here.

First, there is such a thing as too much signal. Your external antenna could be overloading the 868 receiver to the point of corrupting the DMR signal. Try using the radio's own antenna, placed in a location like a window sill where it gets a good signal instead.

Second, if you're listening to a business DMR system, it may be using RAS or Tier 3 trunking. There's mixed accounts for how well the 868 receives signals with RAS... some say it works under certain circumstances, others say not at all. I can't say personally, no RAS enabled DMR systems around here at all. Ditto for Tier 3 systems... I can only hear very distant Tier 3 systems when the conditions are right.

However, for all local DMR systems around here (no RAS, no Tier 3) the 868 / 878 has been flawless in it's ability to listen in.
 

alcahuete

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Not sure if this is your problem or not, but the Anytone will not receive on RAS systems using a system key. Your scanner will ignore the RAS data and listen to it.
 

G8OEO

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Thanks very much for the interesting replies. I’m situated in the North East of England and since first posting I have found a couple of commercial DMR systems which the Anytone seems perfectly happy with. I must be doing something right.

It may well be that the one fairly busy system I was most interested in is the only one where at best occasional snippets of transmissions can be heard. It is a single site system and DSD+ decodes everything perfectly so I think that rules out Simulcast.

I’m now using the supplied whip antenna and this is good enough for the repeaters I’ve found so far but hasn’t really helped with the muted calls on the frequency in question.

I’ll play around a bit more tomorrow with forcing the monitoring of this repeater onto one or other of the single slots. I briefly tried that this evening and fingers crossed it may have resulted in one conversation being heard in full.
 
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G8OEO

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Just in case anyone else has a similar problem the answer seems to lie in not relying on VFO mode.

I finally got around to entering the details for the problem repeater into a memory channel and it is now working perfectly. I’ve no idea why that should make such a difference.

I’m surprised to find the DMR audio an the Anytone much clearer and easy to understand than I’m used to using DSD+ and now that it’s all working properly I’m very pleased with the purchase.

Thanks again to all who tried to help, it’s a fairly steep learning curve for me.
 

TassieJay

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Just in case anyone else has a similar problem the answer seems to lie in not relying on VFO mode.

I finally got around to entering the details for the problem repeater into a memory channel and it is now working perfectly. I’ve no idea why that should make such a difference.

You're right, that shouldn't make any difference. Might be a bug in the firmware. How did you have your VFOs set up when this was a problem? (I take it you had the sub-VFO active & displayed, and was it set to DMR or and FM frequency?)
 

G8OEO

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Excuse my ignorance, as a newcomer from the analog world I haven’t yet got my head around what the sub channel is.
I know when I discovered the option I turned it OFF for the time I was playing with DMR reception on VFO A.
Does it simply refer to the alternative VFO? I’m guessing there’s more to it than that.
 
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G8OEO

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I now see that with sub channel turned ON I can monitor two independent frequencies, at the moment I have one VHF and the other UHF and all working fine. Thanks @TassieJay for pointing me in that direction.

When having problems earlier the sub channel was definitely turned OFF.
 

KE5MC

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Good to hear you sorted out the promiscuous mode issue and I was thinking programing a channel would help. I did check moving down the menu chain and found #2 D-Digital was selected and to my surprise I dialed up a VFO frequency and heard a truck drive clearly with CC, TS and TG displayed. While in the menus I was listening to a clear voice DMR signal and switched to #1 A_Analog and immediately it went analog and I could only hear the raw DMR signal. Two time slot promiscuous mode was on during this 'investigation'. I'm using CPS 1.37 & F/W 2.37, I briefly tried 1.39 & 2.39 from the ConnectSystem site. For me that produced a DCF file that N0GSG's contact manager said was corrupted. I switched back to the 1.37/2.37 without issue. I see now BridgeCommSystems has it up, but the Anytone site did a couple of days ago and is missing this morning. I'm stick with 1.37/2.37 as it seems to be working well enough and produces a good DCF making it easy to update the DMR contact list.
Good Luck!
Mike
 

G8OEO

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Cheers Mike, 1.39/2.38 seem to be working together OK for me, at least as far as I can tell.

I have changed some parameters in the VF0_A channel using CPS and managed to get that working on the "awkward" repeater too.
Basically by copying the same settings as were in the existing working memory channel I chose almost at random , so changes made to Tx Permit, CH Scan List and Contact.
I won't rock the boat just yet to find out which of these were essential in getting it working, I'm happy to be monitoring for now.
 

KE5MC

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Working from the radio, front panel programing which I don't usually do. Not the greatest pics, but the left has the blue rectangle with DIG not easily read and the red speaker has dual time slot monitor on. For me that seems to be the key for promiscuous mode to work in VFO mode. In the right pic you can see the choice for Channel Type which changing will immediately effect the received audio and changes the blue rectangle in the left pic from DIG to ANA once you navigate back to the main screen.

I meant to comment earlier that on Main and Sub the radio not being a true dual receive radio it is switching between Main and Sub for any traffic. Not using the radio with Main and Sub showing I suspect when one is actively receiving the other is ignored. Easy to confirm when two different frequencies are active and Main and Sub are displayed.

Historically Anytone lock stepped the CPS and F/W version number with a brief period when it wasn't' done which did not seem to effect anything. Mostly done for radio options added to radio F/W that the CPS has to keep up with. With X.39 something in the CPS creating the DCF file didn't allow contact manager to load that file at least for me. I stepped back to X.37 for both CPS & F/W. Works well enough at that level so I'll stay for now.

Click pic for a larger fussy picture. :cool:


VFO_Scr.jpeg CH_Type.jpeg
 

G8OEO

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Things, like the display layout and the menu system etc, that seem obvious to me now that I’ve played with the radio for four days were insurmountable problems when I started this thread. :)

I did think the radio apparently having dual receive was too good to be true although the switching between main and sub in DMR mode seems to work well enough. The D578 Anytone mobile looks very promising.
 

TassieJay

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You're spot on there - 'sub' VFO refers to the alternate VFO, when you have both displayed & turned on.
Be aware that the radio doesn't actually have two independent receivers eg: one for each VFO. All the radio is doing is rapidly cycling between the two VFOs, like a two channel scan, and when activity is found on one of them, it stops to hear the activity.

I think the only radio like this that does have two truly independent receivers is the MD2017?

But otherwise, single VFO operation is normally extremely reliable, very strange that you had that issue with it and putting it to a memory channel fixed the problem. I can't work that out at all.
 

G8OEO

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You're spot on there - 'sub' VFO refers to the alternate VFO, when you have both displayed & turned on.
Be aware that the radio doesn't actually have two independent receivers eg: one for each VFO. All the radio is doing is rapidly cycling between the two VFOs, like a two channel scan, and when activity is found on one of them, it stops to hear the activity.

I think the only radio like this that does have two truly independent receivers is the MD2017?

But otherwise, single VFO operation is normally extremely reliable, very strange that you had that issue with it and putting it to a memory channel fixed the problem. I can't work that out at all.
I’m fairly sure that VFO mode not working must have been largely down to my own incompetence. Once I realised that the VFOs were simply two memories at the end of the channel list on the CPS I made sure their settings were the same as the memory channel which was already working. (See post #13)
Still not sure which of these changed parameters actually did the trick but all is working fine now. I still have an awful lot to learn.
 

KE5MC

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As I recall seeing them at the end of my list of channels I believe their mode was analog. They seem to be added during some combination of install, load, save or import and not of your own doing. I just delete them from my codeplug as I have others in my list for simplex Digital and Analog.
 

G8OEO

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Would be interesting to see if the radio simply reconstructs the missing VFO channels at the end of the list when VFO mode is selected. I guess it’s likely assuming it doesn’t simply throw up an error when it can’t find them.
 

chief21

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I think the only radio like this that does have two truly independent receivers is the MD2017?
For the benefit of others who might read this thread, I don't see any indication in the MD2017 specs or the narrative description to believe that it is a true dual-receive radio. And since it was one of the first dual-band DMR rigs, I would doubt that it would have independent receivers.
 
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