P25RX Firmware Updates / Testing

[turnpike61]

Liking 2021-1214:0545 very much. Nice clear audio, good decodes across the board. I don't understand much about the RX model. What does it do actually?

 

[btt]

Liking 2021-1214:0545 very much. Nice clear audio, good decodes across the board. I don't understand much about the RX model. What does it do actually?

Thanks for testing. The idea of the RX Models is to provide the ability to select various code / DSP algorithms prior to decoding. This allows me the ability to experiment with different methods of trying to improve the demod for various situations without disturbing an "RX Model" that was working for someone previously. The default will likely work well, but try them all and see if you find one that works better for you. Model 3 may not be a good choice on the P25RX.

 

[brndnstffrd]

Wont have a chance to do much with the update till Thursday/Friday, but i look forward to testing it out. Im very excited to see how it works on P2 with all the new changes!

 

[1969Roadrunner]

What I have found is RX Model 0 works the best on the P25RX Phase 1 over here. RX Model 1 thru 3 get progressively worse as I go up. All 4 are still very acceptable but, I can hear slight decoding chop if that makes any sense.

 

[dispatchgeek]

Dang Todd. I don't even get this level of service out of vendors I pay six figures a year to in maintenance contracts! I don't think words can convey how much I appreciate what you are doing for our hobby.

I've been playing with roaming at my desk with 0314, and noticed a new oddity. Fringe sites struggling with decode tend to have choppy voice frames towards the end of the voice call. Almost like it's struggling to put the frames together as the EVM climbs up to around 0.1. I'll have to do a recording and some logs to illustrate what I am saying. Seems to happen regardless of RX Model selected.

I've also noticed that it might be attempting to output Encrypted audio, even when options are in place to not output encrypted audio and skip for 30 seconds.

I'll give it a spin tonight in the car. I won't be able to see data at that point, but I can still give it a listen.

Seriously Todd. This is fantastic hardware/software. I truly appreciate your efforts.

EVM is error vector magnitude. It is a relative measurement that is very similar to SNR. Think of it as a measurement of how well the 4 clusters of symbols are packed relative to each other for a given number of samples. Lower number is better. The real advantage to having it is that it gives us a very fast way to calculate the quality of the signal independently of decoding or FEC. The next step is to use it for roaming / scanning. For example, I promised @dispatchgeek that I would use the EVM as a way that we could have the receiver make a decision when to drop a control channel when roaming and move on to the next channel. This will be based on a programmable threshold for EVM and the time that the EVM is unacceptable in order to drop the channel. I'll try and get this done soon. It also gives a number that you can objectively use to measure qualitative differences of the signal independent of signal strength and decoding error rate.

I will say that I am very happy with how easy this update was considering the magnitude of changes. I thought it would possibly take a week or more. It only took hours even though there were 90+ files with changes. I take this as a sign that the code is now in a state where the main differences in the P25RX and P25RX-II code have been separated out sufficiently to make it possible to share the majority of the code base without modifications.

 

[Vermonster]

Continued good performance here this morning on several Con+ systems.

First time I have played with RID Alias on a Con+ system and it does not seem to be capturing RIDS or reading them if I add manually and import a CSV file (they show up on the Alias tab if I import, but on on the Display View tab they don't appear)

 

[kb8q]

I've been running the P25RX BTConfig version 14_0545 for over 25 hours now with no discernible issue. The versatility of this radio is an exponential improvement over any other receiver I've used to monitor the system in my area. With over 2,000 active TGID's in the "neighborhood", this little P25 gem now can do most of what I was doing with 4-6 others radios combined. Hats off to Todd for all the work that's going into continuous improvement of the software. I can run 2 of these on one MacBook air without any problem. Even better to send the audio from one of the 2 via Bluetooth for enhanced audio from the radio tracking the higher priority talk groups.

 

[btt]

Dang Todd. I don't even get this level of service out of vendors I pay six figures a year to in maintenance contracts! I don't think words can convey how much I appreciate what you are doing for our hobby.

I've been playing with roaming at my desk with 0314, and noticed a new oddity. Fringe sites struggling with decode tend to have choppy voice frames towards the end of the voice call. Almost like it's struggling to put the frames together as the EVM climbs up to around 0.1. I'll have to do a recording and some logs to illustrate what I am saying. Seems to happen regardless of RX Model selected.

I've also noticed that it might be attempting to output Encrypted audio, even when options are in place to not output encrypted audio and skip for 30 seconds.

I'll give it a spin tonight in the car. I won't be able to see data at that point, but I can still give it a listen.

Seriously Todd. This is fantastic hardware/software. I truly appreciate your efforts.

Thank you for the feedback! I'll contact you directly regarding the new issues to see if we can get it figured out.

Continued good performance here this morning on several Con+ systems.

First time I have played with RID Alias on a Con+ system and it does not seem to be capturing RIDS or reading them if I add manually and import a CSV file (they show up on the Alias tab if I import, but on on the Display View tab they don't appear)

I don't think I added support for RID / Alias for DMR yet. It is added to the list. Thank you.

 

[turnpike61]

Had a bit of a problem here this morning. I realized I'd missed some traffic, so went to enter my state police channel back to my list of CCs, so pulled up some old CC backups and found that none of them could be used. The "Test Selected Frequencies" results were intermittent, usually no-sig, and despite roaming, I'd only catch bits of transmission with nothing logged. I started from scratch and did a search, re-added CCs from that search, and it appears to work now. Not sure if this was an anomaly or not, but had me scratching my head for some time.

 

[epersson]

Had a bit of a problem here this morning. I realized I'd missed some traffic, so went to enter my state police channel back to my list of CCs, so pulled up some old CC backups and found that none of them could be used. The "Test Selected Frequencies" results were intermittent, usually no-sig, and despite roaming, I'd only catch bits of transmission with nothing logged. I started from scratch and did a search, re-added CCs from that search, and it appears to work now. Not sure if this was an anomaly or not, but had me scratching my head for some time.

My earlier post.. I saw this a couple times... symptoms were the same as you describe.

Just to see what happens. I power cycled the box to see if I could get it to display the log correctly. no joy.. But it did the same thing as I've seen before with the 0 talk block counts, they stayed at 0 across all 4 systems. I wrote the config, and had to write twice and it then started showing talk blocks again. While it was 0 the check frequencies came back as no signal as well. I have it holding for 2 seconds before moving on so the first second is generally 0 the second second gets a count. of 45-55++. The check frequencies came back as P25 at this point.

 

[vince48]

this happens all the time when i enter a new system. 0 talk block counts, re-write to the P25rx and the system comes alive

 

[W0RS]

Attempting to load test version 1638 on P25RX but only seeing rapid double flashes on the device. The status says “resetting device” and has been that way for 10 minutes….

 

[station09]

zz

Attempting to load test version 1638 on P25RX but only seeing rapid double flashes on the device. The status says “resetting device” and has been that way for 10 minutes….

My radio is doing the same thing

 

[epersson]

zz

My radio is doing the same thing

Saw same. Multiple times.I shut down btConfig and restarted and it continued.

 

[station09]

Done the same thing No luck

 

[Vermonster]

Shut down BT Config software
Unplug P25RX device
Wait 10 seconds
Restart BT Config software (version that you were trying to update)
Plug P25RX device back in

If that does not work:
Use the same process as above, but this time hold the blue button on the P25RX device and KEEP HOLDING IT 10 SECONDS after you plug the device back in. Then release. Firmware update should continue.

If that does not work, wait for @btt to comment.

 

[station09]

done both , Status says resetting device, and stays that way . also says Working but nothing showing in the working window. Thank you Sir

 

[Vermonster]

Sorry to hear that.
I'd wait for btt. I had this once before and was able to get things working again with recovery firmware.
It always makes me nervous to update firmware on any device; I've probably updated 50 times between RX-I and RX-II devices I own and only once had to resort to recovery firmware.

The other thing you might try is closing software and unplugging device. Then moving new .exe file into folder with nothing else in it (especially no BT*.txt file). Then try several rounds of restarts including button hold. One time with RX-II this resulted in success for me.

 

[maus92]

Yea, the FW update process has been flakey for a while now, on both Linux and Windows. Eventually the device will take it after doing the tricks, so just be persistent until @btt can track down the root cause(s).

 

[kb8q]

If the 10 second reset didn't work, try the 40 second reset. Same procedure with the button except the 40 second reset will return the unit to factory default with clean flash memory. I've had success with that in the past when nothing else seemed to work. I've installed _1638 on 2 radios and they're running like a champ. Hopefully you'll get there too.

done both , Status says resetting device, and stays that way . also says Working but nothing showing in the working window. Thank you Sir