Install CHIRP for Baofeng UV-5R on Linux or Win10
Programming the very affordable Baofeng UV-5R (also available as Pofung UV-5R) dual band mobile radio can be quite complicated. Luckily, there is a program called CHIRP. This free and open-source radio programming tool together with a USB programming cable makes setting up your radio a breeze. In this blog post we will install CHIRP and a programming cable on Windows 10 and Linux (Ubuntu/Mint/Debian) to work with the Baofeng UV-5R tranceiver. It will enable basic downloading and uploading of frequencies and settings from and to the radio. In later posts we will have a more in-depth look at al the settings available. Then we wil also see how to program the radio for GMRS or PMR use, and how to set it up as a basic radio scanner.
Disclaimer: this documentation is for educational purposes only. For operating this radio you are most likely required to be a licensed radio amateur or own a commercial licence. Be sure to check the rules and regulations in your area first.
Baofeng UV-5R (Pofung UV-5R) tranceiver
The UV-5R is a cheap but decent Chinese tranceiver that is sold for the ultra-low price of around 30 USD (25 EUR). The radio is dual band (VHF/UHF, 136-174/400-520MHz, 5 Watt) and has 128 memory channels which can be alpha tagged. Together with the scanning capabilities, this makes the UV-5R also a basic but useful scanning radio. The coverage of the GMRS, FRS and PMR bands, the FM radio (65.0MHz-108.0MHz) and the LED flashlight make it a popular choice for ‘preppers’. And for that price, the radio even comes with a wrist strap, battery and charger included.
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USB programming cable
For connecting the radio to the PC I used this generic, cheap Kenwood-style serial cable. It came without any drivers, and at least for Windows 10 and Linux (Ubuntu, Mint) you don’t need any. Just plug in the cable and Windows and Linux will recognize it.
In Windows 10, you should find it as “USB SERIAL CH340 (COMx)” under Settings > Devices. This also shows the COM-port to be used in CHIRP later on.
In linux, the command LSUSB should list the USB-serial adapter like this:
Bus 003 Device 012: ID 1a86:7523 QinHeng Electronics HL-340 USB-Serial adapter
In my experience it’s best to connect it straight to the PC; connecting it via a USB hub may cause problems.
CHIRP radio programming tool
CHIRP is a free, open-source tool for programming amateur radios. It supports many manufacturers and models, as well as provides a way to interface with multiple data sources and formats. Another big advantage is that it’s multi-platform: it’s available for Windows, Linux and Mac. CHIRP not only makes the programming so much easier, it also provides access to features not available through the radio’s buttons or keypad. For exmaple, with CHIRP you can give each memory channel a name or ‘alpha tag’ of 7 characters. Then instead of the frequency, the tag can be shown in the radio’s display. This tagging can not be done by using just the radio’s keypad.
CHIRP: Windows 10 install
The Windows 10 install is pretty straightforward:
-
- After plugging in the USB cable, download the latest Windows installer (“chirp-daily-xxxxxxxx-installer.exe”) from the CHIRP download page;
- Run the installer, ignoring the Windows Defender warnings. After installation is complete, run CHIRP (from the application menu);
- Select the “Radio” menu and then “Download From Radio” (Alt+D);
Install CHIRP for Baofeng UV-5R on Windows 10 – Download from Radio - Choose your radio settings: the COM (USB) port (for me it was “COM5”), the vendor (“Baofeng”) and the model (“UV-5R”);
Install CHIRP for Baofeng UV-5R on Windows 10 – Radio settings - At the warning “Proceed with experimental driver?”, click “Yes” to continue;
- Follow the instructions on hooking up the radio:
1. Turn radio off;
2. Connect cable to mic/spkr connector;
3. Make sure connector is firmly connected;
4. Turn radio on (volume may need to be set at 100%);
5. Ensure that the radio is tuned to channel with no activity;
6. Click OK to download image from device;Install CHIRP for Baofeng UV-5R on Windows 10 – Instructions - The image will now be downloaded from your radio (a.k.a. “cloning”).
Install CHIRP for Baofeng UV-5R on Windows 10 – Cloning - After the image is downloaded you can use it as template. You can edit it and save multiple versions to disk, or upload an image back to your tranceiver.
Install CHIRP for Baofeng UV-5R on Windows 10 – Image file
CHIRP: Linux install
The Ubuntu/Linux Mint/Debian install (I installed it on Mint) is not very different from the Windows 10 one (for screenshots, see the Windows install above):
- After plugging in the USB cable, issue these commands to download and install CHIRP:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:dansmith/chirp-snapshots
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chirp-daily - After installation is complete, run CHIRP;
- Select the “Radio” menu and then “Download From Radio” (Alt+D);
- Choose your radio settings: the serial port (for me it was “/dev/ttyUSB0”), the vendor (“Baofeng”) and the model (“UV-5R”);
- At the warning “Proceed with experimental driver?”, click “Yes” to continue;
- Follow the instructions on hooking up the radio:
1. Turn radio off;
2. Connect cable to mic/spkr connector;
3. Make sure connector is firmly connected;
4. Turn radio on (volume may need to be set at 100%);
5. Ensure that the radio is tuned to channel with no activity;
6. Click OK to download image from device; - The image will now be downloaded from your radio (a.k.a. “cloning”).
- You can now use the downloaded image as template. You can edit it and save multiple versions to disk, or upload an image back to your tranceiver.
Note: if you get an “Access denied” error when accessing the serial port, you need to add your username to the dialout group. For instance, when your username is “johndoe” you should issue the command:
sudo adduser johndoe dialout
Editing radio settings and finding the firmware version
With CHIRP, you can also edit the radio’s settings. You can even adjust a quite few settings that are not available through the keypad and LCD screen. Just click the “Settings” tab on the left, below the “Memories” tab. Here you will also find your tranceiver’s firmware version under “Other Settings > Firmware Message 1“. You can only upload an image to a tranceiver with a matching firmware version.
To be continued
In some future blog post(s) we will take a closer look at all the available channel options, the radio settings and how to adjust them for GMRS, FRS and PMR communications. And finally we will see how we can set up the Baofeng/Pofung UV-5R as a cheap and basic radio scanner. To be continued!
hi,
I updated with win 10 but still i get error message radio is not responded while downloading from radio (cloning)please you advice how to solve it.
Thank you very much for providing your information. It is helpful…however, I’m a bit confused by what you tell us above about the driver for the USB programming cable. Early on you indicate that Win10 “recognized” your chip/cable and the driver was functional. “It came without any drivers, and at least for Windows 10 and Linux (Ubuntu, Mint) you don’t need any. Just plug in the cable and Windows and Linux will recognize it.”
Then later, you instruct us to install Chirp, but STILL install another driver, and an experimental one at that. “At the warning ‘Proceed with experimental driver?’, click ‘Yes’ to continue”
My experience with installing drivers on top of other WORKING drivers tends to cause instability in Windows…so why are we installing the experimental driver when a known and working driver already exists?
(without installing CHIRP, my cable is recognized by Win10 x64 as…
“Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port (COM4)”
The Prolific “PL-2303 TA” chip is verified (TA replaced HXx series chips which only work pre-Win8). “It is a USB-to-serial cable with a Prolific PL2303 USB-to-serial ship. It is supported by the unmodified drivers USB in Windows and Linux.”
What happens if we do NOT install the “experimental” driver? Will CHIRP installation proceed and then work with the known functional Prolific driver? If not, is that by design or just not coded yet? (I have spent quite some time researching an answer to this before mucking-up the CHIRP install, so it’s not asked lightly). By the way, my research suggests it is ONLY the programming cables that use counterfeit versions of the Prolific chips that cause “the driver problem” for CHIRP…so that’s another element of confusion here.
It doesn’t work with windows 10, the problem is the drivers for the USB cable itself. This guy had some sort of Kenwood cable. And must of been able to find a driver for that cable. If you bought a cheap cable with the Baofeng, you won’t find a driver for it on Windows 10. If your cable has the FTDI chipset, which is what mine is, there is no Win 10 driver for that. I have seen other pages that tell you to roll back the driver to 3.2.0.0 but rolling back the driver will be greyed out. It won’t be an option. You need to get an old Win XP or Win 7 machine. You can’t get prolific drivers that work on 10. And if you can, you won’t find anyone that can explain how to instal them. Because it won’t go the way they say it will!
There are different cables with different chipsets. As you can read in my blog post, the cable I described (with CH340 chipset) definately works with Windows 10. I have been using it for a long time now without any problems. Also, make sure you do not use a USB hub and you tune your radio to an inactive frequency when transferring data.
Win10 x64 recognizes and says the driver is working properly for a USB programming cable with the Prolific PL-2303 TA chip (the “TA” chip variant replaces earlier versions which were only supported for BELOW Win8 OS). One checks the Device Manager to see if the cable was recognized, and one can confirm the COM port and driver (if any) assigned. One can also sometimes verify/confirm the specific UART chip used with a manufacturer-specific program. The specific version of the chip can also make a major difference on whether or not Win8 and above will recognize it. And…unfortunately, there are counterfeit chips out there which can/will cause problems. Some cable manufacturers do provide specific drivers for their cable. I don’t yet have enough experience with CHIRP and non-standard but non-counterfeit programming cables to talk to using those.
Same problem as most others, “radio did not respond”. I suppose I’ll try to get a different cable.
Well, update – The instructions say to turn the volume up all the way, but I tried a suggestion elsewhere to try setting it 1/3 of the way up and try, and if it doesn’t work keep turning it up a bit and try again. Worked on the first try.
Hi SupaG, I’m glad you solved the problem. Thanks for sharing your experiences, I will add your solution to the blog post.
Everything is going smoothly until I get to “UPLOAD TO RADIO” and the choice is greyed out.
Worked when it was new six months ago, so I am not sure I am doing differently or wrong this time.
Hi Tod, did you select the right COM port?
Hi
i have a uv-5rc and have downloaded the chirp as you recomended.
i have followed your step by step to the part where it says “radio”
my chirp version dose not have this setting up on the headlines.
Have i got the right version?
With some radio models, one MAY be able to select a different model and download the target radio’s data.
It simply may also be listed in an unexpected way which may make it difficult to find. For example, if one is looking for the “UV-5RC” it will be found listed as “UV5-RC”, so using the “find” may not work unless you know the EXACT usage. CHIRP apparently does not ignore the dash in the model name.
Was having trouble getting my UV5RE+ working in Chirp newly installed on Linux Mint, came across your pages – BRILLIANT info and sorted in minutes.
VERY VERY grateful, thank you for your hard work.
GH
For the linux instructions, you don’t say what to run.
I found chirpw package, but when running that, “No module named ‘chirp'”
After running “python3 -m pip install chirp”, I then get “SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to ‘print’. Did you mean print(“Unable to import pyaudio)?”
This is on ubuntu 18.04 – seems it uses the wrong python version. Do you have suggestions?
Chirp sucks! It won’t install on Mac OS 11.4 Big Sur at all. Apparently you have to know how to go through the command lines in Terminal to set it up.
Installed Chirp okay on an old Win 8 PC and it runs but will not communicate with the preferred cable listed in Baofunk’s instructions.
Chirp stinks! It won’t install on Mac OS 11.4 Big Sur at all. Apparently you have to know how to go through the command lines in Terminal to set it up.
Installed Chirp okay on an old Win 8 PC and it runs but will not communicate with the preferred cable listed in Baofeng’s instructions.