My DMR & AnyTone Journey

Where It Started

I wanted to share some of my history with DMR and AnyTone radios, because my involvement with them goes back quite a bit further than my work with AnyTone.

I first got into DMR in 2016 with the TYT MD-380 and MD-390 series. Those were the radios I cut my teeth on, and believe me, it was a learning experience in what Customer Programming Software (CPS) should not look like.

That was also when I started working with MMDVM hotspots. Combined with a Raspberry Pi, an MMDVM hotspot acts as a bridge between a compatible radio and networked digital voice systems, supporting modes such as DMR, D-Star, YSF, P25 and NXDN.

My Introduction to AnyTone

In 2020, I got my first taste of the AnyTone platform when I was introduced to the BTECH DMR-6X2. Although the 6X2 used firmware and CPS software developed specifically for BTECH, the radio was based on the AnyTone AT-D878 platform.

I very quickly learned the CPS and started figuring out how to recover radios when something went wrong.

One particularly memorable problem happened when someone loaded firmware intended for the wrong hardware version. The telltale sign was the dreaded message:

“Flash Error, Check and Change”

There were two different hardware platforms involved, the AT-D878UV and AT-D878UVII. The good news was that the radio could usually be recovered. The bad news? If you hadn’t backed up your codeplug, you were probably going to be rebuilding it.

And that’s a lesson you generally only need to learn once.

From Helping Online to Technical Support

I started putting those skills to use by helping people in Facebook groups and digging into bugs I found in CPS and firmware.

In 2022, I saw a job opening with a company selling AnyTone radios, including the AT-D878UVII Plus and AT-D578UVIII Plus. I applied, went through several interviews, and was brought on in a fully remote technical-support role and paid as a 1099 contractor.

In 2023, I became Assistant Technical Support Manager and transitioned from being paid as a 1099 contractor to being paid as a W-2 employee, while continuing to work remotely. I continued working for the company remotely until my employment ended in August 2026.

During that time, a friend helped put me in direct contact with AnyTone about beta testing radios, firmware and CPS software in my free time. That eventually led to me becoming an AnyTone beta tester as well as a moderator in an AnyTone Facebook group.

That community became incredibly useful for identifying problems. When people began reporting issues such as radios becoming stuck in transmit, APRS packets failing to send, or other unexpected behavior, I could try to reproduce those problems and report my findings directly to AnyTone.

That gave their engineers real-world feedback they could use to diagnose problems and, when appropriate, address them in subsequent firmware releases.

Working Directly With AnyTone

After my employment ended in August 2026, I became an administrator of the AnyTone Facebook group.

Duane, N6DMR, suggested that I ask AnyTone about becoming their USA Technical Representative. I knew from the beginning that it would be an unpaid volunteer role, but that wasn’t really the point.

It gave me an opportunity to continue helping the DMR community while working with AnyTone directly, rather than helping the community through my work for a single dealer.

If you’ve read the story about my Elmer, Kevin W7XF, you’ll understand why that matters to me.

Amateur Radio was never supposed to be only about making money. Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of that. Would I like to still make money helping others? Yes. However, that is not my main goal or purpose.

I spent too much time beating myself up and taking on too much. Eventually, I realized I needed to take better care of myself and put more energy into the things that actually make me happy.

For me, that’s helping people while still having time for the things I enjoy: Amateur Radio, computers, photography, karaoke, and sometimes just getting in the car, turning up the radio and singing loudly enough that passing motorists become concerned, or even join in at the next stop light!

What’s Next?

I don’t know exactly what the future holds, and I’m okay with that.

What I do know is that I want to keep learning, keep experimenting, and keep helping people in the Amateur Radio and DMR communities. Whether that’s testing new AnyTone firmware, building software, tracking down some bizarre CPS bug, helping someone recover a radio, chasing the tech support raccoon that tried to steal my coffee, or explaining something I’ve already spent far too many hours figuring out, that’s what I want W9JAM and Coffee, Coax & Computers to be about.

And with my other half by my side, whatever obstacles are ahead don’t stand much of a chance.

Jeremiah Mulford, W9JAM