k5prog/README

k5prog - Quansheng UV-K5 EEPROM programmer v0.1
(c) 2023 Jacek Lipkowski <sq5bpf@lipkowski.org>

This program can read and write the eeprom of Quansheng UV-K5.
It can read/write arbitrary data, and might be useful for making backups of
the configuration, mass programming of radios or reverse engineering of 
the radio configuration. Please note that it is probably possible to break 
your radio by writing a bad configuration to it, so please use at your own 
risk. 

Note that this program does not edit the contents of the eeprom. Use an
external hex editor.


The program is written to (hopefully) run on POSIX systems. Testing was done 
on GNU/Linux, but MacOS X and windows under cygwin should work too. 

For licensing see the file LICENSE.


---- Usage ----

For a basic usage use -r to read eeprom, -w to write eeprom. The -v option
gives more verbosity.

Read configuration:

sq5bpf@chronos:~/k5prog$ ./baoprog -r -v
Quansheng UV-K5 EEPROM programmer v0.1 (c) 2023 Jacek Lipkowski <sq5bpf@lipkowski.org>

k5_prepare: try 0
******  Connected to firmware version: [k5_2.01.23]
Sucessfuly read eeprom


The eeprom contents are written to the file k5_eeprom.raw, this can be
changed with the -f option.



Write configuration from file k5_eeprom.raw:

sq5bpf@chronos:~/chirp/k5prog$ ./baoprog -w -v
Quansheng UV-K5 EEPROM programmer v0.1 (c) 2023 Jacek Lipkowski <sq5bpf@lipkowski.org>

k5_prepare: try 0
******  Connected to firmware version: [k5_2.01.23]
Read file k5_eeprom.raw success
Sucessfuly wrote eeprom

The -w option writes only the memory blocks which are written by the original
radio software, in the same order. The -W ioption writes all memory, possibly 
allowing overwriting of calibration data (if there is any) or other data which
may be critical to the proper functioning of your radio.


Other configuration options are:

Quansheng UV-K5 EEPROM programmer v0.1 (c) 2023 Jacek Lipkowski <sq5bpf@lipkowski.org>

cmdline opts:
-f <file>       filename that contains the eeprom dump (default: k5_eeprom.raw)
-r      read eeprom
-w      write eeprom like the original software does (warning: may brick your radio)
-W      write all eeprom (even bigger warning: this is sure to brick your radio!)
-p <port>       device name (default: /dev/ttyUSB0)
-s <speed>      serial speed (default: 38400, the UV-K5 doesn't accept any other speed)
-h      print this help
-v      be verbose, use multiple times for more verbosity



---- Compiling ----

This software was tested to compile using gcc on GNU/Linux systems, using a
simple makefile:

sq5bpf@dellix:~/k5prog-0.1$ make
gcc -O2 k5prog.c -o k5prog

Other POSIX platforms should work also, including MacOS X. 

The software compiles under Cygwin/Microsoft Windows, but has not been tested.
According to the cygwin documentation you should use /dev/comX to use port comX
(for example using com6: k5prog.exe -v -r -p /dev/com6)


If port this to another platform, or do anything interesting with this
software, tell me about it.

---- Other uses ----

The file uvk5_original_eeprom.raw contains an eeprom downloaded from a UV-K5
radio.  Maybe it can be used to resurrect another radio of the same type 
if it was broken (perhaps by the use of this software :).




---- Protocol ----

The programming protocol used by this software has been reverse engineered
by observing communications between the radio and the original programming
software. It is not a variation of the typical Baofeng-like protocol.


The format of the datagram sent to the radio is:

0xAB 0xCD len 0x00 <data bytes> <2 bytes CRC> 0xDC 0xBA

The length is the length od the data bytes.

The data is protected by a typical CRC-16 xmodem algorithm.
The data bytes and the CRC are obfuscated by xor-in it with an 8-byte 
sequence.

Fortunately the eeprom data contains a lot of 0xFF and 0x00 bytes, so the XOR
sequence is easy to find by observing the traffic.


The datagram sent from the radio is the same, but the CRC field is set to
0xFFFF. This shows that the CRC is not for data integrity, but for further
obfuscation (same as the XOR).


I intend to publish a further description of the protocol, and the eeprom
contents, meanwhile the sources can be used as documentation.


VY 73

Jacek / SQ5BPF