I am not much for appliance radios and even less for RF gear that is designed to appeal to iphone users, so my experiment with DMR was bound to end badly. I picked up an MD380 specifically because it had been hacked and there was some chance that I could do something interesting with it.
Well I
did do something interesting with it... i
bricked it.
begins here: no documentation, poorly written programming software, badly translated from Chinese, no support, device options that are unexplained yet if mis-set will prevent proper functioning of the radio without yielding a clue as to why, and yes the ability to turn the radio into a useless black plastic block with a screen because the most basic error checking is not built into the software.
all of which i knew, yet i just wasted dozens of hours scanning websites, reading obscure reddit threads and blogs, motorola product manuals and prepper websites trying to garner enough information to program and use a radio that will connect to a bunch of 2M DMR repeaters that I won't use any more than I use the 2M FM repeaters that already surround me by the hundreds. not to mention the hundred or so bucks for a radio that isn't even worth scavenging for parts because it doesn't really have any.
seriously, what was i thinking? DMR? really?
did i mention that i am a flippin' idiot?
ends here, you may return to your regularly scheduled programming.