BAOFENG DM32UV DMR Handheld Review from Terry Osborne ZL2BAC
Written By Terry Osborne ZL2BAC.
Techoman have recently been running a special on the Baofeng DM32UV which is a new DMR capable handheld radio. At the advertised price, this looked like a good way to get into DMR.
Reviews on YouTube were favourable, so I downloaded the manual and programming software from the Baofeng web site. There is a link on the Techoman web site that takes you to this web page. I placed the order on Sunday night and the radio arrived on the following Tuesday afternoon. Full marks to Techoman, excellent service as usual.
The package contained the Radio, 2500mAH battery, desktop charger, USB-C charger cable, NZ power adapter, antenna, carrying holster and manual. The manual is in English but the print is very small. It’s quite comprehensive (58 pages). The downloaded version is much easier to read. The radio feels quite solid, commercial construction standard. The battery slides into the radio socket and there is a securing screw on the bottom of the battery. (Don’t forget to screw this up). It would be useful to record the serial number of the radio before installing the battery.
The first instruction in the manual (page 7) is to charge the battery. Using the desktop charger, I was pleasantly surprised to find it fully charged in less than 4 hours.
When turning the radio on after charging, the display came up for 5 seconds and went blank. This was disconcerting after the radio had reported “battery high”. To fix this, select “Menu” on the keypad and scroll down to “Settings”, select “Radio Settings” then “Display Func” then “Light Time”. Scroll to “Always On” and press “ok” (Menu key). At this point, it would be useful to check and record which firmware version is installed. Again select “Menu” and scroll down to “Settings”, “Device Info” and “VerSions”. On my radio this reported DM32.00.01.48. The latest firmware on the Baofeng web site is 1.47 so no firmware upgrade should be required.
Programming: It is possible to program the radio from the keyboard but it is much easier using the Baofeng CPS software (or it would be if the bugs were fixed). The first thing that you will need is the correct programming cable. This is standard USB – 2Pin Baofeng cable. If you don’t have one, include it in your order for the radio. I already had one from a long time ago that I used with my Baofeng UV5R. This is explained in detail on the Techoman blog web page.
I already had a DMR ID from when I was trying out some software to listen to DMR over the internet and this was still valid.
Software: Download the CPS programming software from the Baofeng web site (https://www.baofengradio.com/pages/download). The latest version is v1.60 and this is what I used. Download and install this in a convenient folder. When you start CPS, you will find that it comes up in Chinese. You can switch it to English in the “Settings (S)” menu but I found it was easier to change the default language to English in the “cps” configuration settings file. Open this in Notepad, it will probably default to Notepad. 7 lines down you will see a line “lang=cn”. Change this to “lang=en” save the file and restart the program. It should now come up in English.
Next, plug the programming cable into a USB port on your PC. The PC will ding to indicate that it has found the cable and brought up a Com Port. On the PC open the “Control Panel”, select “Hardware and Sound” and “Device Manager”. Open the “Ports” menu and you should see “USB-SERIAL CH340 (COM3) or something similar. On the CPS software, select “Setting”, “COM Setting” and select the “COM” setting in the box to 3 or the port from the above.
The common instruction from here is to plug the programming cable into the radio and turn it on. This resulted in a “Communications Fail” error message.
This caused me some problems for several days while I checked COM ports, Drivers and even questioned if my programming cable was obsolete or faulty. Craig at Techoman replied that the cable should be OK but hadn’t seen my problem before. I then tried turning the radio on without the programming cable connected and waiting for it to boot up. (See turning the display on permanently above). I then plugged the programming cable in and I was able to read from the radio. I didn’t save the radio default file which was probably a bad move.
A word of warning here, choosing “New” to create a new code plug or attempting to modify the default code plug will result in programming the radio in Chinese even though CPS is in English.
I had already created a Code Plug file by editing the DM32UV_CHCH_SAMPLE.data from the Techoman website. I wrote this file to the radio and it seemed to go in OK. I listened to the TG530 DMR channel for some time but failed to hear any signals. I found I could trigger the local DMR repeater and I was coming up on the dashboard. I was expecting to hear a burst of audio noise from the repeater’s response when I could see the response on the signal strength display. My conclusion was that the DMR Channels were not receiving audio. As it turned out, the lack of received audio was due to the lack of activity.
The Analogue channels worked fine.
This prompted a long and extensive review of my DMR settings. I decided trying to diagnose software configuration problems over 9 talk groups and 32 channels was going to be difficult so I then tried another code plug sample from the web and configured it for the Kapiti (ZL2KB) DMR repeater. Note that all repeaters do not carry the same talk groups. As advised in the Techoman notes, find out what talk groups and in what time slots they are supported on your local repeater.
In my case an email to Jeff ZL2JG confirmed 5 talk groups on ZL2KB.
These are:
- TG530 (ZL Wide) on TS2
- TG1 (World Wide) on TS1
- TG9 (Local) on TS2
- TG8 (ZK) on TS1
- TS13 (World Wide English) on TS1
Therefore 5 channels are required. I also put each talk group into its own RX Group.
Note. To edit an entry click on the number on the left side of the block and edit the resulting field. Note that there is a panel at the bottom of the screen that reads, “Add, Delete, Insert, Up, Down, Import, Export”. This panel vanishes after making any change and you need to save and restart the program to make another change.
Adding new channels threw up another issue. The CPS software assumed that I wanted a repeater and set the channel for “Talk Around” so the radio transmitted on the repeater output frequency. I found this when I couldn’t trigger the repeater but all the settings were correct. I used my UV5R to check and found this problem. Also the display had an “arrow” (see page 12 of the manual) on the top line of the display. I fixed this by ticking the “Forbid Talkaround” box in the channel field.
10 minutes after fixing this issue, I heard VK4PDG on talk group 530 and had a short QSO. The DM32UV is now working on DMR.
The working Code Plug is here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/x9h7k5ennme0cnectbawj/AFPQlXP58dbF722vcBDlW-c?rlkey=m72fvm4yybb4dnhaxce0lb2zi&dl=0
The DM32UV is an excellent radio but the CPS software is somewhat buggy and could do with some work.
Terry Osborne ZL2BAC