Recently, some friends and I acquired the VGC VR-N76. It’s a nice little handheld radio, with IP67 rating, and focused on APRS communications, which are supported both via KISS TNC and via the app available for both Android and iPhone.

Last weekend Paulo (CT2IWW) took his VR-N76 on a SOTA activation we did together. And here is where the problems started. We noticed a freaky behavior: whenever the radio received a strong signal, the audio would start to chop, like this:

When we arrived home, I contacted both Vero Telecom and Wimo (where we bought our radios), where I linked the video. Vero took literally 4 minutes to respond. They asked me the frequency we were at and the firmware version of the radio. 20 minutes later Wimo also replied saying that they were forward the issue to Vero, but at this time I was already in direct contact with them, which I let Wimo know.

And the debugging session started. First Vero asked us to try turning of the GPS, which we did, and did not help. Then, they let us know a secret: if you go into the main menu, then the status sub-menu, and then hold the green button for 5 seconds, a test interface appears. Vero kindly asked us to reproduce the problem, which we did. We sent them the following video:

All of this back and forth happened in the span of a single hour. They thanked for the video, said they were going to forward it to the engineers and let us know the results. For us here in the western tip of Europe it was already evening.

The following morning I see I have an email:

We have updated a beta firmware , please test it and let me know the result.

And this is the point we discuss the beta firmware option of the VR-N76. In the VR-N76, the firmware is updated via the smartphone app. It only provides stable firmware versions unless you unlock yet another secret: on the app, visit “Device settings”, click “Firmware version” and then, click 10 times on the text that reads “No updates available”. This will trigger beta firmware updates and there will be something to update after all.

Beta firmware updates gif

So we did the beta firmware update (and also gained VOX as a feature apparently) and this was the result:

What a success! I thanked Vero for the support and informed Wimo of the progress. Hopefully the next stable firmware release happens soon so that everybody can benefit from the fix.

I am quite happy with how all of this turned out. I have to say that everybody, both from Vero Telecom and from Wimo have shown real interest in the situation and the fix was quick and swift. I also feel that such an issue should not even have left initial testing from Vero’s side, but I can’t complain too much with this quality of support in debugging and fixing the issue.

Now, to find more issues to solve.

73, Rui, CT7ALW