RT3 + MD380 Tools Firmware,Give you a different DMR radio experience !

Retevis RT3 is a DMR Digital radio. Satisfying customer’s basic requests for Digital radio. It is high cost-effective and good quality,praised by customers,especially in Europe and United States.

About the RT3 radio:

RT3 is a VHF(136-174Mhz)/UHF(400-480Mhz) DMR radio. Fashion design, good quality and low price, all make RT3 is a good choice for hams to use the Digital radio. With 1000 channels and 16 color Codes and 259 CTCSS/DCS Codes, totaling 272,000 combinations, it is easy to find an available channel.

High/low power (5w/4w),

Remote kill/stun/activate,

Voice prompt,

Power-on protection,

Text messages in digital mode,

Encryption function,Built-in CTCSS/DCS,

Priority scan,

Complying with digital protocol ETSI TS 102 361-1,-2,-3,

DTMF decoding and encoding,

Private call, group call,all call in digital mode,

Operate in both Digital & Analogue mode,etc.

All those functions make RT3 is suitable for hams. Updated software available for new features, When there is new software we will update it on our website, you can download here. When there is new firmware we also can provide the newest firmware.

About the MD380 TOOLS Firmware:

There are some very professional hams are not satisfied with the existing function. They do some revise for RT3’s firmware and do another firmware MD380 Tools. If you are interest, you also can try it with RT3. It will give you another DMR radio experience. Here i will introduce some new function of MD380 Tools.

1.It can make your radio storage more contacts information (you can imput the contacts list by .csv file directly. very convenient), and when some one calling ,you can see more on your radio lcd.

2. Change Date Format to: Alt. Status.
It’s all the way down at the end of the scrolling list of date formats. This turns off the Date and Time display and shows you Last Heard information instead. Trust me, you will like this. You will notice the date and time display will be gone, to be replaced by: “lh” followed by the call sign, and an arrow pointing to the Talkgroup number they were using.
3.Mic Bargraph: Enabled
This enables a cute flashing VU Meter when you are transmitting. Use it to see how hot your voice level is and adjust your mouth-to-radio distance or voice to make it consistent. Digital radio voices that are too hot sound awful, so use this feature as a reference for good operating practice.
4.Edit DMR ID:
You can now change the radio’s DMR ID without using the CPS software. Handy if you need to switch identities in the field.
Some very interesting hidden features can be enabled under the Utilities | MD380Tools menu. Scroll down to DevOnly!! and enable it. I believe you need to have Promiscuous mode enabled as well. This enables hidden menu items that are accessed with the single digits of the numeric keypad.

Here are the most interesting items:

8: Display screen one of diagnostic information . This screen displays some interesting data including current channel, zone, and talk group number. There appears to be an RSSI value, with normalized values from 1 to 5. There is an open ticket with the MD380Tools group to change this to display RSSI in dBm in the future.

 

 

 

9: Display screen two of diagnostic information. This screen displays calibration values for current power level, the TX and RX frequencies, color code, time slice and talk group name.

 

 

4: (Netmon4) Display the last 10 stations heard. Includes a time stamp, and the talk group heard on. An asterisk * at the end of the line indicates heard on your current talkgroup, an exclamation mark (!) indicates that station was heard on different talkgroup from the one you are currently monitoring.
5: Clears the list displayed in option 4 above. In an upcoming firmware release, this button will have called Netmon5, and will have new functionality.
3: Temporarily changes the current talk group that the radio will transmit on to the talk group the last station heard was using. This is of particular interest to those using the promiscuous mode. If you are monitoring stations with promiscuous mode enabled, you may hear stations come through that are not using the talk group your radio is currently using on the selected memory channel. You can press “3” on the keypad, and go directly back to the station you last heard. This works very well if you are using a hotspot device or hear something on a repeater but don’t have that talk group in a memory channel.
#: Displays heard list similarly to option 4, however displays DMR ID and talkgroup, instead of callsign. Green: Brings up the normal Menu of items. Allows changes in any of the normal items, but the Back (Red) does not function to exit the Menu. Press any of the other hidden menu digit access buttons to exit from the menu, and back to the hidden screens.
7: Exits from the hidden diagnostic screens.

Though I have introduce so many functions of MD380 TOOLS, If the RT3 already satisfy your basic requests. I do not recommend you to upgrade. If you upgrade to MD380 Tools, you will can’t revert to factory settings or factory firmware. MD380 tools writed by hams and it is free, they are very professional for radio. So I do not recommend you to upgrade avoiding mistakes when upgrading.

About how to upgrade RT3 with MD380 TOOLS, this is the method writed by Mark (VE3PZR). this method is simple but the users list is not the newest.

http://www.foxhollow.ca/DMR/?menu=experimental

Another method is a little complex. But all the information is newest. If you want to upgrade RT3 with MD380 TOOLS on Windows system. You need to run it on a Linux Virtual Machine. It need to download three .exe files. there is an guidance wrote by  Warren Merkel, KD4Z. If you want to learn more you can watch this link. http://www.radioamatoripeligni.it/i6ibe/rt3/firmware/kd4z/kd4z.htm

Learn more details of MD380TOOLS you can click this link by KD4Z, Project page – learn more and get the PDF documents: https://github.com/KD4Z/md380tools-vm

Retevis is a Radio company, we have all knids of radio, analog radios, digital radios, childredn radios, business radios, mobile radios,etc. You must can find a model suitable for you. Retevis company has another new sub-brand Ailunce, it is mainly for hams. the first model HD1 is a dual band DMR radio. it not only save the RT3’s functions but also directly increase some MD380 TOOLS’s functions. It is also a good choice for hams.

At last i want to say again, though I have introduce so many functions of MD380 TOOLS, If the RT3 already satisfy your basic requests. I do not recommend you to upgrade. If you upgrade to MD380 Tools, you will can’t revert to factory settings or factory firmware. So think twice before you upgrade it.

If you have any questions just contact us.

17 thoughts on “RT3 + MD380 Tools Firmware,Give you a different DMR radio experience !”

  1. Yes you can revert back to factory firmware and settings. All you have to do is download the firmware you had originally installed on your radio and do a firmware upgrade. Your radio will be back to factory settings. I’ve done it.

    1. Yes, a lot of professional hams are very know about the radio. we also need to learn from them. We hope we can get more advice from hams and do a better radio for them. That is also our goal. thanks

  2. andrew davis

    your new Firmware did not work so i have got my retevis rt3 not working so hwo do i got it to reset the bank to the old Firmware please . 2e0cfy

  3. Gary Schelske

    OK,
    I had to try it, it will not work on the RT3S series. But I restored it from my backup.
    Any plans to include them someday ? I used it on a TYT md-390 and it is GREAT.
    If you do, or have one for the 380/390S series, can you send me a link as I as of yet haven’t found anything.
    Thank You

  4. So…the RT3 description says that it has voice prompts, but if this is at all similar to, or even the same as, the TYT MD380, it does not.

    I just ordered a RT3, couldn’t pass up the sale price even though I have a MD380 with the MD380tools on it. Somewhere. In a box. Because we were going to move and didn’t. Anyway, I understand newer radios may or may not work with MD380tools.

    As a blind ham, I, personally, would love to see stock RT3/8/82/what have you firmware include either voice prompts or, failing that, the morse narrator function incorporated into MD380Tools, which reads out all screens and prompts in morse code for complete eyes-free operation. I’m even fairly sure that the guy that originally wrote the morse narrator code wouldn’t mind. (I can’t speak for him though.)

    Also, y’all really need a better CAPTCHA that provides non visual solving alternatives. Try ReCAPTCHA if you really must have a CAPTCHA.

  5. Michael Langford

    I am looking at the RT-3 UHF GPS model, but also looking at the RT-8 UHF GPS radio because being IP67 safe.

    Can both of these radios update to md380-tools and support “promiscuous” mode?

    Thanks!!

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