Quansheng

9 Articles

Turning A Quansheng Handheld Into A Neat Desktop Transceiver

October 28, 2024 by 18 Comments

The Quansheng UV-K5 is a popular handheld radio. It’s useful out of the box, but also cherished for its modification potential. [OM0ET] purchased one of these capable VHF/UHF radios, but got to hacking—as he wanted to use it as a desktop radio instead!

This might just sound like a simple reshell, but there was actually a bit of extra work involved. Most notably, the Quansheng is designed to be tuned solely by using the keypad. For desktop use, though, that’s actually kind of a pain. Thus, to make life easier, [OM0ET] decided to whip up a little encoder control to handle tuning and other control tasks using an ESP32. This was achieved with help from one [OM0WT] and files for that are on Github. Other tasks involved finding a way to make the keypad work in a new housing, and how to adapt things like the audio and data module and the speaker to their new homes.

Despite the original handheld being much smaller than the case used here, you’d be surprised how tight everything fits in the case. Still, the finished result looks great. We’ve seen some other adaptable and upgradable ham radio gear before, too. Sometimes custom is the way to go! Video after the break.

Continue reading “Turning A Quansheng Handheld Into A Neat Desktop Transceiver” →

Hackable Ham Radio Gives Up Its Mechanical Secrets

July 9, 2024 by 4 Comments

Reverse-engineered schematics are de rigeur around these parts, largely because they’re often the key to very cool hardware hacks. We don’t get to see many mechanical reverse-engineering efforts, though, which is a pity because electronic hacks often literally don’t stand on their own. That’s why these reverse-engineered mechanical diagrams of the Quansheng UV-K5 portable amateur radio transceiver really caught our eye.

Part of the reason for the dearth of mechanical diagrams for devices, even one as electrically and computationally hackable as the UV-K5, is that mechanical diagrams are a lot less abstract than a schematic or even firmware. Luckily, this fact didn’t daunt [mdlougheed] from putting a stripped-down UV-K5 under a camera for a series of images to gather the raw data needed by photogrammetry package RealityCapture. The point cloud was thoughtfully scaled to match the dimensions of the radio’s reverse-engineered PC board, so the two models can work together.

The results are pretty impressive, especially for a first effort, and should make electromechanical modifications to the radio all the easier to accomplish. Hats off to [mdlougheed] for the good work, and let the mechanical hacks begin.

Hacking A Quansheng Handheld To Transmit Digital Modes

July 5, 2024 by 11 Comments

Have you ever thought about getting into digital modes on the ham bands? As it turns out, you can get involved using the affordable and popular Quansheng UV-K6 — if you’re game to modify it, that is. It’s perfectly achievable using the custom Mobilinkd firmware, the brainchild of one [Rob Riggs].

In order to efficiently transmit digital modes, it’s necessary to make some hardware changes as well. Low frequencies must be allowed to pass in through the MIC input, and to pass out through the audio output. These are normally filtered out for efficient transmission of speech, but these filters mess up digital transmissions something fierce.  This is achieved by messing about with some capacitors and bodge wires. Then, one can flash the firmware using a programming cable.

With the mods achieved, the UV-K6 can be used for transmitting in various digital modes, like M17 4-FSK. The firmware has several benefits, not least of which is cutting turnaround time. This is the time the radio takes to switch between transmitting and receiving, and slashing it is a big boost for achieving efficient digital communication. While the stock firmware has an excruciating slow turnaround of 378 ms, the Mobilinkd firmware takes just 79 ms.

Further gains may be possible in future, too. Bypassing the audio amplifier could be particularly fruitful, as it’s largely in the way of the digital signal stream.

Quansheng’s radios are popular targets for modification, and are well documented at this point.

UV-K5 All-Band Mod, Part 2: Easier Install, Better Audio, And Two Antennas

June 20, 2024 by 47 Comments

OK, it’s official: the Quansheng UV-K5 is the king of hackable ham radios — especially now that a second version of the all-band hardware and firmware mod has been released, not to mention a new version of the radio.

If you need to get up to speed, check out our previous coverage of the all-band hack for the UV-K5, in which [Paul (OM0ET)] installs a tiny PCB to upgrade the radio’s receiver chip to an Si4732. Along with a few jumpers and some component replacements on the main board, these hardware mods made it possible for the transceiver, normally restricted to the VHF and UHF amateur radio bands, to receive everything down to the 20-meter band, in both AM and single-sideband modulations.

The new mod featured in the video below does all that and more, all while making the installation process slightly easier. The new PCB is on a flexible substrate and is considerably slimmer, and also sports an audio amplifier chip, to make up for the low audio output on SSB signals of the first version. Installation, which occupies the first third of the video below, is as simple as removing one SMD chip from the radio’s main board and tacking the PCB down in its footprint, followed by making a couple of connections with very fine enameled wire.

You could load the new firmware and call it a day at that point, but [Paul] decided to take things a step further and install a separate jack for a dedicated HF antenna. This means sacrificing the white LED on the top panel, which isn’t much of a sacrifice for most hams, to make room for the jack. Most of us would put a small SMA jack in, but [Paul] went for a BNC, which required some deft Dremel and knife work to fit in. He also used plain hookup wire to connect the jack, which sounds like a terrible idea; we’d probably use RG-316, but his mod didn’t sound that bad at all.

Keen to know more about the Quansheng UV-K5? Dive into the reverse-engineered schematics.

Continue reading “UV-K5 All-Band Mod, Part 2: Easier Install, Better Audio, And Two Antennas” →

Reverse Engineering The Quansheng Hardware

April 23, 2024 by 11 Comments

In the world of cheap amateur radio transceivers, the Quansheng UV-K5 can’t be beaten for hackability. But pretty much every hack we’ve seen so far focuses on the firmware. What about the hardware?

To answer that question, [mentalDetector] enlisted the help of a few compatriots and vivisected a UV-K5 to find out what makes it tick. The result is a complete hardware description of the radio, including schematics, PCB design files, and 3D renders. The radio was a malfunctioning unit that was donated by collaborator [Manuel], who desoldered all the components and measured which ones he could to determine specific values. The parts that resisted his investigations got bundled up along with the stripped PCB to [mentalDetector], who used a NanoVNA to characterize them as well as possible. Documentation was up to collaborator [Ludwich], who also made tweaks to the schematic as it developed.

PCB reverse engineering was pretty intense. The front and back of the PCB — rev 1.4, for those playing along at home — were carefully photographed before getting the sandpaper treatment to reveal the inner two layers. The result was a series of high-resolution photos that were aligned to show which traces connected to which components or vias, which led to the finished schematics. There are still a few unknown components, The schematic has a few components crossed out, mostly capacitors by the look of it, representing unpopulated pads on the PCB.

Hats off to the team for the work here, which should make hardware hacks on the radio much easier. We’re looking forward to what’ll come from this effort. If you want to check out some of the firmware exploits that have already been accomplished on this radio, check out the Trojan Pong upgrade, or the possibilities of band expansion. We’ve also seen a mixed hardware-firmware upgrade that really shines.

Open HT Surgery Gives Cheap Transceiver All-Band Capabilities

March 22, 2024 by 34 Comments

Watch out, Baofeng; there’s a new kid on the cheap handy talkie market, and judging by this hardware and firmware upgrade to the Quansheng UV-K5, the radio’s hackability is going to keep amateur radio operators busy for quite a while.

Like the ubiquitous Baofeng line of cheap transceivers, the Quansheng UV-K5 is designed to be a dual-band portable for hams to use on the 2-meter VHF and 70-centimeter UHF bands. While certainly a useful capability, these bands are usually quite range-limited, and generally require fixed repeaters to cover a decent geographic area. For long-range comms you want to be on the high-frequency (HF) bands, and you want modulations other than the FM-only offered by most of the cheap HT radios.

Luckily, there’s a fix for both problems, as [Paul (OM0ET)] outlines in the video below. It’s a two-step process that starts with installing a hardware kit to replace the radio’s stock receiver chip with the much more capable Si4732. The kit includes the chip mounted on a small PCB, a new RF choke, and a bunch of nearly invisible capacitors. The mods are straightforward but would certainly benefit from the help of a microscope, and perhaps a little hot air rework. Once the hardware is installed and the new firmware flashed, you have an HT that can receive signals down to the 20-meter band, with AM and SSB modulations, and a completely redesigned display with all kinds of goodies.

It’s important to note that this is a receive-only modification — you won’t be transmitting on the HF bands with this thing. However, it appears that the firmware allows you to switch back and forth between HF receive and VHF/UHF transceive, so the radio’s stock functionality is still there if you need it. But at $30 for the radio and $12 for the kit, who cares? Having a portable HF receiver could be pretty handy in some situations. This looks like yet another fun hack for this radio; we’ve seen a few recently, including a firmware-only band expansion and even a Trojan that adds a waterfall display and a game of Pong. Continue reading “Open HT Surgery Gives Cheap Transceiver All-Band Capabilities” →

Update Your Chinese Radio Without The Pain

August 13, 2023 by 44 Comments

The new hotness in cheap radios this year has been the Quansheng UV-K5, a Chinese handheld transceiver with significant RF abilities and easy modding. The amateur radio community have seized upon it with glee and already reverse-engineered much of the firmware, but flashing the thing has always required a minor effort. Now thanks to the work of [whosmatt], it can be flashed with little more than a web browser and a serial cable.

This feat was made possible through the magic of WebSerial, a handy feature that allows web applications to talk to connected hardware. We’ve seen it in action a few times in the world of badges, and as browser support for it has improved it’s now available through browsers on all the major platforms.

The web app allows tweaking of the Quansheng settings and will, no doubt, be capable of uploading that when fully open-source firmware is available. It should be of great interest well beyond the world of Chinese radios, though, because we’re guessing there are a lot of projects that could benefit from such a ubiquitous interface tool.

If you’d like to know more, WebSerial is something we’ve looked at in the past.

Header image: [Concretedog]