Bug #11512
openCHIRP Kills the Voice prompts on Retevis RT21v
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Description
After imaging with CHIRP the Retevis RT21v does not have a voice prompt on power on, or upon changing channels. Instead, you will hear the speaker activate, and it will be dead air for the approximate amount of time which the lady would talk, then it goes silent.
I have as a workaround set the voice prompt to off so I do not have this dead air activating the speaker, but this is definitely a bug! I was able to reproduce this across 10 RT21v radios, our entire fleet.
My process of imaging these radios was download an image from one unmodified by chirp, and then add CTCSS codes, and reupload, I also changed the squelch level to 1, but really other than that I left the settings at default from what CHIRP pulled.
Personally I don't care about this bug much, but I still figured it would be good to report it. I have also attached the image I am using on my radios. As I only modified the mentioned settings I did not back my image up from the factory, but I have learned Retevis is very responsive over support, so I would be happy to hunt down a factory image if needed.
These radios were initially imaged on Windows, but the same scenario happens on Linux as well. Otherwise the radios work great (except I got a defective batch of antennas, but Retevis is sending free replacements out for that...)
Files
Updated by Bryant L 23 days ago
If I program with the factory software the voice stays gone, this includes if I set it to English, Chinese, or OFF, and swapping back in any order.
As for factory resetting I do not know of a way to do that on this radio as it has no screen, I will reach out to retevis to see if they can provide me with a factory image, and if so upload it here as well.
Apologies, apparently I don't get email notifications from chirp issues so I am just seeing this post now!
Updated by Bryant L 23 days ago
That image is after everything broke, not the factory image.
I'll hunt down my backups folder later on today, different device not available to me currently. I definitely downloaded before making changes, so fingers crossed...
Email is out to retevis as well, they usually reply within 12 hours and I'd anticipate around 9PM Eastern today I'll get a file.
Sep 6, 2024 10:28:04 AM Jim Unroe redmine@chirpmyradio.com:
Updated by Bryant L 22 days ago
- File Retevis_RT21V_20240819T151804.img Retevis_RT21V_20240819T151804.img added
- File Retevis_RT21V_voice_working.img Retevis_RT21V_voice_working.img added
- File chirp_debug-guaew6oy.txt chirp_debug-guaew6oy.txt added
Here is the factory image - shout out to my backups folder! (and of course Jim for telling me it exists...!)
That DID fix the issues, so I did some digging.
First I thought it was the tx power being set to high from low, so I went back to low, all the sudden all the issues were gone, voice was back! smoking gun! then I reintroduced high power on all 5 channels... nothing.
Next I tried my CTCSS codes, boom voice is gone! smoking gun! so then I removed the tone from channel 1, and the voice returned on all five channels...huh? Then I re-added the same exact tone setup to channel 1, and the voice stayed...huh?
I am at a loss, I have gone full circle and now everything is working right. Definitely uploading my currently working image, and debug logs, hopefully someone smarter than me can compare my broken image to the currently working one?
While I was at it, I did change 4 + 5 to NFM from FM, that was just an organizational change as FM doesn't seem to have as far of a range. on vs off did not affect the voice.
As of now - everything works. Why?: no clue.
Updated by Bryant L 22 days ago
- File chirp_debug-h8suttox.txt chirp_debug-h8suttox.txt added
- File Retevis_RT21V_20240907.img Retevis_RT21V_20240907.img added
I put the known voice broken image, the first image on this case, back on the radio... voice is still working properly.
I have nine radios still with this glitch, but the original image which I used for all ten radios I cannot reproduce the issue any more after going through the testing performed earlier in my prior note.
Going to again upload my debug log to see if we can get some sanity out of this, quite literally I took my known broken image, switched voice to on, and we're golden.
I would also like to add I am using the identical programming cable I used for all ten radios. The only difference is I am doing this test imaging on a linux laptop instead of my normal windows one, but I haven't had any stability issues (yet). I can try testing it over there, but I will hold off until I am asked to do that.
Updated by Bryant L 22 days ago
- File chirp_debug-g8ecr_x7.txt chirp_debug-g8ecr_x7.txt added
- File chirp_debug-oeny2a58.txt chirp_debug-oeny2a58.txt added
1 AM troubleshooting is the best troubleshooting, whatever I just did re-killed the voice, all I did was set 4 + 5 to NFM (which I did earlier without issues!). Logs included again, you'll have the prior log in question and then towards the end you will have the newer entries.
I tried imaging twice in case I didnt have the cable plugged in all the way or something silly.
After getting to this point I was determined to do one more run of logs, so I killed chirp, started fresh, pulled my 0907 image uploaded above, and put it back on the radio, voice is restored.
Updated by Bryant L 20 days ago
This seems to be a way the radios handle their programming. I am able to fix the voice prompt by:
- Reinstalling the factory image
- powering off the unit
- unplugging k1 connector
- verifying voice prompt has returned (sometimes requires second power cycle)
- powering radio off
- reconnect k1
- flash desired changes e.g. CTCSS codes, Squelch level, etc.
- steps 2-4 again
these steps have revived 8/10 of my radios, read on for the fate of the last two...
I honestly wonder if it's some weird quality control issue with how this model receives programming, I have had some quality control problems at the hardware level with the 21v, like 9/10 antennas falling apart, and two radios are now bricked where they won't accept programming from the CPS via upload or download, but retevis support has been helpful so far.
I have no way to know this for sure, but it seems the Rt17v might be a more refined unit.
Apologies for all the rambles, I want to make sure these radios are well documented so I can hopefully guide future people better.
Updated by Dan Smith 20 days ago
It will be really hard to tell what's going on here unless we have a couple of images with minimal changes we can diff.
If you restore a radio, please download an image with chirp and attach here as the factory image. If you program that back to the radio with no changes, does the voice remain? Then what is the minimal change you can make with chirp to cause the voice to go away? If you can make that change from the factory image and then attach that so we can see what bits are different from the clean factory image we can try to suss out the differences.
For the most part, these radios dump their entire memory, chirp modifies that, and then loads the entire memory back into the radio. Some radios have some additional interaction (separate config blocks and such) but not most. I'm not familiar with this specific model (@Jim Unroe is) but if it's a detectable difference between two images then I can work on what in chirp is causing that.