Bluetooth (BLE) Radios¶

Using Bluetooth radio (which use a BLE-based serial approach):

It works on Linux (and possibly MacOS) if you use the ble-serial:

1. Install ble-serial Python package (pip install ble-serial)
2. Make note of the Radio MAC address (xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx) e.g. from Android BT application (or install blescan the same way and use sudo blescan to find the devices in neighborhood)
3. Run ble-serial -d xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx being the address)
4. In the Download/Upload dialog choose /tmp/ttyBLE as the Custom... port and do standard download/upload
5. Please note that the radio restarts after upload and BLE BT connection is lost, you have to restart ble-serial in such case
6. If you want to make it permanent, add /tmp/ttyBLE to favorite_ports= (as described on AdvancedConfig) into the [state] section (you may have to create the key) in ~/.chirp/chirp.config with your favorite editor to have it always listed in port list:

favorite_ports = /tmp/ttyBLE

Please note, that it works reasonably well with radios having a built-in BLE module, but for external BLE K-connector adapters, it may not be working, especially if the serial port speed the adapter uses does not match the one of the configured device and it ignores the speed settings. Models which were confirmed to work:

• Radtel RT-490 (Bluetooth version)
• Radtel RT-900 (Bluetooth version)
• KSUN UV-110D (Bluetooth version)
  

It is quite possible this will work with other devices with built-in BLE module as well (e.g. TIDRADIO TD-H3/H8)

It is verified NOT to work with an external adapter (Abbree/Baofeng one supplied with Radio Frequency Programmer Android application) on following models:

• Radtel RT-470
• Baofeng UV-18 Pro MAX
• Quansheng UV-K5 and its variants