tarxvftech / zum_ambeserver

An open firmware for the ZUM Radio AMBEServer board, with an ESP32, ethernet, and a DVSI AMBE3000 vocoder chip.

ZUM Radio AMBE Server board open firmware

What

This is a fully-open firmware for the ZUM Radio AMBE Server board, which provides an ESP32 (with USB serial, Ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth connectivity) access to an AMBE3000 voice codec chip from DVSI.

The point of this hardware and software is to make the various AMBE voice codecs accessible to various programs that might need them, such as cross-mode software (e.g. to bridge DMR and D-STAR to each other or other modes), soft network clients for these modes, and that sort of thing.

AMBE itself is proprietary, patent-encumbered, and all kinds of other things. It's also legacy, and there are now fully-open alternatives. Alas, AMBE is built into several protocols in wide use, hence the need for this hardware and software.

Who

Expected audience is mostly amateur radio operators with some developer experience. Releases and firmware upgrade information for non-developers available TODO: HERE. For non-developer support, please see the ZUM Radio support options.

Why

The original firmware was not made open source. This firmware, instead, focuses on being open, and maybe trying to do some new things.

Open is strictly better as it allows for fewer bugs, more features, more innovation, and ultimately prevents hardware from becoming useless through the simple passage of time (or people).

How

Compile this firmware from Linux

python -m venv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install -U platformio
pio upgrade
pio run

PlatformIO's pio run should auto-install the required dependencies and build an image.

Flash the board over USB serial with pio run -t upload (no button presses needed or anything) and watch the serial output with pio device monitor.

Manual flashing: TODO (notes below from what PIO does, but not yet recommended):

esptool.py --chip esp32 --port "/dev/ttyUSB0" --baud 460800 --before default_reset --after hard_reset write_flash -z --flash_mode dio --flash_freq 40m --flash_size 4MB 
0x1000 /root/.platformio/packages/framework-arduinoespressif32/tools/sdk/esp32/bin/bootloader_dio_40m.bin  \
0x8000 /app/.pio/build/lolin32/partitions.bin  \
0xe000 /root/.platformio/packages/framework-arduinoespressif32/tools/partitions/boot_app0.bin  \
0x10000 .pio/build/lolin32/firmware.bin \

Network Flashing

You can compile the firmware with ArduinoOTA by defining OTA in main.cpp. Flash with pio run -t upload --upload-port IP_ADDRESS_HERE. (Untested in Docker). This is not working right now (suspect the flash partition layout is incompatible with OTA) and is disabled by default.

Compile this firmware from Windows (GUI)

TODO? (No Windows around, here, so please fill in! ~MM)

Use this firmware's services / Client software

TODO (Not there yet!)