KFDShield/EFJ5100ES : Radio displays KEYLOADER, but I'm stuck past that point

[Warpspeedpoop]

Hello,
I recently acquired a KFDShield and all the necessary hardware to perform keyloading on my EFJ 5100 ES radios.

I am using a Motorola NTN8613C Hirose adapter which I've gotten modified as per the recommendations in this thread.

Miraculously enough, I've managed to get to the point where plugging in everything together results in my radio displaying "Keyloader".

When performing the Self Test in the KFDtool software (the test that requires the radio not to be plugged in), it passes successfully! However, when using "Detect MR", I first get this error message:

and if I try again shortly after:

The same thing occurs when trying to "view key info" or when trying to actually load a key:

One exception to this is that I've managed to use the "view key info" once, which returned some variation of a "no keys found" message, which is encouraging. However that's only happened once after getting many error messages, and it hasn't happened again.

I'm at a loss at the moment, given the fact that "Keyloader" shows up on my radio's screen the entire time everything is connected together. Would anyone have any idea what is going wrong?

Thanks a ton

 

[epikjohn]

Hello,
I recently acquired a KFDShield and all the necessary hardware to perform keyloading on my EFJ 5100 ES radios.

[...]

I'm at a loss at the moment, given the fact that "Keyloader" shows up on my radio's screen the entire time everything is connected together. Would anyone have any idea what is going wrong?

Thanks a ton

Did you ever figure this out? I found that I am able to read the keys, if they are present, but I get one of the two above error messages if I try to read keys from a radio that has no keys loaded or if I try to load a key at all.

I was not super impressed with the level of support I received from Omaha Comms in shipping and I almost worry that my emails will go unnoticed.

 

[epikjohn]

For anyone else who has stumbled upon this thread trying to get the keyloader working with the KFD Shield, you MUST follow the instructions in this post:

EFJ5100 Keyloading/Programming

Hi guys! This is my first message on this forum. tl;dr I don't know how to program these radios and I don't know how to know how to program these radios, but would like to! Also, it seems I don't know what I don't know and request further guidance. I have a lot of EFJ5100 radios with different...

forums.radioreference.com

Essentially, the firmware in the "Releases" section of the OmahaComms GitHub repo does not work properly. You have to actually download the code, extract it, then navigate to the .ino file inside that folder. Once you upload this to your arduino, it will work with their Releases version of the software.

 

[kitsapkilldeer]

Hey I'm the guy from that post--I actually still haven't gotten encryption fully solved yet. I'm not sure my software is figured out. I tried to follow the instructions from the contributors in my thread and also from Comms&Logistics, but sometimes this information conflicts. Regardless, I've tried every way. Is there something stopping someone from literally re-zipping or uploading their KFDShield software from the correct version on the Github fork with whatever working combination of files swapped in the directories? Because I think however I've been trying to use the software hasn't been working. I've double checked my cable and I think my soldering is good. But I want to rule out the program first. If there's any reason this can't be done let me know. @epikjohn

 

[epikjohn]

Re-zipping won't do much, as the files are already there. I am on my work computer otherwise I would try to assist a little bit more, but can you verify the version numbers and source of your firmware and software? Its crucial that they are the ones you download from the code itself.

The best way to ensure this is to download the firmware code using the "Code" dropdown, then selecting "Download Zip". If this link works, it is the direct link: https://github.com/omahacommsys/KFDtool/archive/refs/heads/master.zip

From there, wipe the arduino, re-upload the new .ino (make sure to put this in a place where you can recognize it.... it is located at KFDtool/fw/ino/kfd-avr/kfd-avr.ino), then run the exe that they provided here: https://github.com/omahacommsys/KFDtool/releases/download/v1.5.5/SW.V1.5.4.zip.

If this is all done properly, I would also double check your arduino version compatibility, then go into the cable/adapter and other hardware problems (perhaps try a different computer/OS?). If it helps, I successfully ran mine on Windows 11 Pro with no problems once I figured out I had to actually download their source code.

At this point, I personally was able to pull the info from the radio with the test utility, however, my problem with keyloading was that I had purchased 51SL ES models, which don't support AES 256. Loading the DES option worked fine once I got it working with the test utility.