CHIRP

Wade Starks wrote:

This Baofeng radio, UV-5G, labeled as UV-5X, is a firmware revision of the Baofeng UV-5X. You currently list this radio, which identifies itself to Chirp as UV-5G, under the “Radioddity” vendor. Several of us Hams, who recently bought this radio, were initially unable to program it with Chirp, because it is not listed as a model/version under “Baofeng.” Picking UV-5X under Baofeng, Chirp simply reported that the radio identifies as UV-5G and would not connect. With UV-5G not listed under Baofeng, it appeared that the radio was not properly registered with Chirp!

The Baofeng / UV-5X selection is for a UV-5R variant that was introduced around 2014. This selection was never intended to be used to program a UV-5R like GMRS radio from Radioddity which (unintentionally?) duplicated its name. Apparently Radioddity was unaware of this model name conflict and Baofeng/Pofung must have never mentioned it to them (or forgot themselves).

While the UV-5X (with the duplicated name) was being reverse engineered for inclusion into CHIRP, Radiodity decided to have the model name changed to UV-5G to eliminate the conflict with the original UV-5X. This couldn't have come at a better time because it was a struggle trying to figure out how to have CHIRP support 2 different radio models having the same model name. So with the model name change, the Radioddity/UV-5G selection was created to support both the UV-5G and the UV-5X (which duplicated the name of a previous model) and left the Baofeng / UV-5X selection available for the original UV-5X model. The "radio identifies as UV-5G" notification was added to the original Baofeng / UV-5X selection so that users with UV-5X model having a duplicated name would know that they were choosing the wrong model and give them a hint as to which model they should choose. Users of the original (non-GMRS) UV-5X will continue to use the Baofeng / UV-5X selection as they have been since 2014.

It was partly by accident that I stumbled upon the UV-5G revision listed under the “Radioddity” vendor. Who would have thought? We strongly suggest that you move or copy this model/revision record under Baofeng, where one would normally look for it.

Yeah. The Supported Radio Models list wasn't updated because it wasn't clear how best to tell the users of the GMRS version of the UV-5X radio with the duplicated name to choose Radioddity / UV-5G. Since they get the "radio identifies as UV-5G" message telling them what to do, it was thought that would be good enough. But in an attempt to explain more clearly which selections should be used for each model, I just now updated the list.

Jim KC9HI

Resolved.