DMR hopes for the PSR-800

[colbrz1319]

I've been gone awhile, so is there any hope that the PSR-800 can be converted to DMR reception?

 

[troymail]

Unlikely

 

[W4KRR]

Someone has already done it:

http://forums.radioreference.com/gre-scanners/335862-dmr-nxdn-systems.html

Scroll down to post #12.

It's probably beyond the capabilities of most users.

 

[ka3jjz]

And there is a question of legality - if Eric were to disseminate his procedure to the public, he could end up in a world of legal trouble...Mike

 

[INDY72]

And we are all crossing fingers Whistler keeps to remain silent on this and not go to court.

 

[Ensnared]

Hire Him

And there is a question of legality - if Eric were to disseminate his procedure to the public, he could end up in a world of legal trouble...Mike

I admit, I was quite impressed by this accomplishment. Perhaps, he should go to work for Whistler. I don't know how this was accomplished.

 

[moonbounce]

I believe the PSR 800 has a built in discriminator tap. All you would need to do is plug a phone cord from I think it is the headphone jack to a computer running dsd 1.74 and you will have DMR decode plus at least 8 other digital signal. It will not decode encrypted signals. Also I believe there is a switch inside the radio that has to be activated.

 

[EricCottrell]

Hello,

While it is possible to squeeze more life out of the PSR-800, it is better to go mainstream with the latest scanners as they will support NXDN as well. Any DMR support for the PSR-800 will be very experimental. There are hardware differences in the charging circuit between the PSR-800 and the WS-1080. It does not matter to me, since I turned off charging. It does seem to work otherwise, but I cannot be 100% sure.

The status of the PSR-800 will not change, as using firmware meant for a different model does not bestow any additional support. User feedback to Whistler about firmware bugs would likely not be considered valid as the hardware is different.

The success of the project is due to GRE/Whistler building on their existing hardware/firmware platform. I just figured out how to transcode a binary firmware file so another scanner model can use it. This only works if the hardware/firmware is similar. This cannot be done with the TRX series as the flash memory size is bigger and expands downward in the address space. Firmware is loaded at the lowest address and expands up.

73 Eric

 

[EricCottrell]

Hello,

I am finally through the final 20% that takes the second 80% of the time. I had to make a couple of icons, do some research on the installer framework, and setup the project repository.

I got a good deal on a TRX-2, so I bought one for possible use in the car. I also have some ideas for a audio playback utility that would support both Uniden and GRE/Whistler. Also for a Pro96COM like program that would decode the CCDump information for DMR and NXDN. The GRE Parser class I created for the current tool can also parse command responses and extract CCDump information. The current tool can set the time in the scanner from the computer.

You can try out the tool and see if it works. You can use the tool or the PC App to restore the original firmware if it does not work. The installer link is at the bottom of this wiki page.
https://github.com/LinuxSheeple-E/GREFwTool/wiki

73 Eric

 

[Haley]

Eric, first off, thank you for all this time consuming work! As an owner of both a Pro18, and Pro668 I am beyond tempted to try this. I knew what I was getting with both models, I paid nowhere near full price for either,both brand new. I never expected anything other than what the initial models were advertised to be able to do. This include Phase 2. for the 18, and PSR800.

Which leads me to this question, would the 18 be able to receive Phase 2 then? With the updated firmware that is. I know Don S. said it could----all it needed was the actual update from RS/GRE, which it never got.

Anyway, this may be a dumb question------I know my limits when it comes to this kind subject matter, and sadly it's not that good. I may or may not be brave enough to try it. But like I said, I know my limits. I did read through all the notes on the update site, just cant tell you how impressed I am. Mike

 

[colbrz1319]

THANK YOU, I will pass this on to my computer/scanner guru in Illinois. A TRX-2 is on my March Birthday Acquisition List. I am up in Northwest NJ and am finding DMR users here in both NJ and Pennsy, using an old Electra BC-250, to band search UHF 450-470, for "strong DMR site noises" so I know what systems I have hopes of monitoring long term, as well as Rad Ref and Digital Frequency Search research. Thank you again, for sharing that technical fix.

 

[EricCottrell]

Eric, first off, thank you for all this time consuming work! As an owner of both a Pro18, and Pro668 I am beyond tempted to try this. I knew what I was getting with both models, I paid nowhere near full price for either,both brand new. I never expected anything other than what the initial models were advertised to be able to do. This include Phase 2. for the 18, and PSR800.

Which leads me to this question, would the 18 be able to receive Phase 2 then? With the updated firmware that is. I know Don S. said it could----all it needed was the actual update from RS/GRE, which it never got.

Anyway, this may be a dumb question------I know my limits when it comes to this kind subject matter, and sadly it's not that good. I may or may not be brave enough to try it. But like I said, I know my limits. I did read through all the notes on the update site, just cant tell you how impressed I am. Mike

Hello,

I provided support for the Pro-18, but it has not been tested. It should receive DMR and Phase 2 after the update of the CPU and DSP, if I got the transcoding correct and the hardware differences are just the battery charge and lack of Alert LEDS. Otherwise go back to the firmware meant for the Pro-18. The bootloader takes a lot of the hazard out of updating.

The PC App for the WS-1080 is required to get Phase2/DMR working as it can update the DSP and create DMR systems. There are some threads about using a later PC App with an earlier model scanner and it should work even before updating.

73 Eric

 

[RainbowSix]

Keep up the great work Eric,
Its guys like you with the smarts and technical back ground that keep this hobby interesting.

Now only if I still had my PSR800 LOL

 

[Haley]

Hello,

I provided support for the Pro-18, but it has not been tested. It should receive DMR and Phase 2 after the update of the CPU and DSP, if I got the transcoding correct and the hardware differences are just the battery charge and lack of Alert LEDS. Otherwise go back to the firmware meant for the Pro-18. The bootloader takes a lot of the hazard out of updating.

The PC App for the WS-1080 is required to get Phase2/DMR working as it can update the DSP and create DMR systems. There are some threads about using a later PC App with an earlier model scanner and it should work even before updating.

73 Eric

Wow! Thanks for clearing that up for me, the Pro 18 gains a lot out of this! I am going to show my ignorance here, but is this legal? I am curious, and I am sure I am not the only one. I hope that doesnt come off wrong, I just really dont know. Again, thanks for all the work! Mike

 

[W4KRR]

Got the WS-1080 FW into the PSR-800 okay, but DMR and P25 wouldn't work at all, even though I was able to program then using the EZ Scan WS-1088 software.

 

[EricCottrell]

Got the WS-1080 FW into the PSR-800 okay, but DMR and P25 wouldn't work at all, even though I was able to program then using the EZ Scan WS-1088 software.

Hello,

Did you update the DSP with the WS-1088 Ez Scan software?

73 Eric

 

[W4KRR]

Hello,

Did you update the DSP with the WS-1088 Ez Scan software?

73 Eric

Yes; it says DSP version 3.0.

 

[EricCottrell]

Hello,

I did some testing and got the same results as other people. Loading WS-1080 CPU 4.4 and DSP 3.0 causes the scanner not to receive P25 or DMR. So I suggest people hold off using the transcoding feature.

My setup was working with CPU 4.1, so I went back to that version and had the same problem. I suspect that it is the DSP 3.0 file. I do not have any method to load previous versions of DSP at this time.

I wonder if "real" WS-1080 scanners are working with CPU 4.4 and DSP 3.0 as this could be a problem with Whistler providing the wrong DSP file when updating the WS-1080 firmware. The only change mentioned for DSP 3.0 was the addition of NXDN.

Sorry that I released this without testing it with the latest release. I mainly checked that the new firmware loaded properly.

Sorry that you will have to wait some more until I figure this problem out. Fortunately I do have previous dsp files, but no method to load them in the scanner.

So do not bother to use the utility to load WS-1080 firmware at this time.

73 Eric

 

[W4KRR]

Good effort anyway; thanks!

 

[NYG]

I have prior versions of the CPU / DSP. Can i manually place that into a folder and load them?

Where is the folder that the utility is downloading the files to?

And thank you for this Eric!

Edit: I found it. I'll give it a shot.