RT Systems for AnyTone
AnyTone is a Chinese radio manufacturer that makes several popular Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) models. They are sold in the United States through a number of distributers, including BridgeCom Systems, ConnectSystems, Ham Radio Outlet, PowerWerx, and others. While the radio is high-quality, the same cannot always be said for their Customer Programming Software (CPS), which is often buggy and can be difficult to work.
RT Systems has recently released their radio programming software for both of AnyTone’s DMR radios, the AT-D578 mobile and the AT-D878 handheld. The cost is $25 for each model, and is currently available as a download for Windows only, supported on Windows 7 through 11. RT Systems offers many of their packages for Macintosh as well, so perhaps at some point in the future they will support the AnyTone programmers for macOS. An optional copy shipped on a CD is also available for an extra charge. Both packages will work with the programming cables provided with the radios, or a cable is available from RT Systems. In the case of the 578, it uses a standard USB A-Micro B cable.
Advantages
Why purchase third-party software instead of using the free software from AnyTone, you might ask? The RT Systems software offers a number of advantages:
The interface is consistent with the other RT Systems programming packages for those who have their software for other models of radios. It allows you to search, copy and paste, import and export, etc.
RT Systems has integrated connections to several external data sources, including Radio Reference, Repeater Book, and RFinder.com. You can search by a geographic area or even a travel route, and it will import a list of repeaters that match your criteria.
It will also download the current DMR contact list, and con filter by countries and states, allowing you to control which contacts you load. With the AnyTone CPS you have to download the contact list separately, and if the full list is larger than your radio’s memory will allow, you must manually edit the contact list yourself.
Another advantage with RT Systems is that they do incremental updates to their software components, and the application has its own auto-update process. With the AnyTone software, with each new release, you must uninstall the old version, and install the new version.
Limitations
The RT Systems programming tool cannot update the firmware in the AnyTone radios, so you will still need to use the latest release of the AnyTone CPS to update the firmware.
The RT Systems programmer is also not able to download a custom picture; this must be done with the AnyTone CPS.
Issues
When I purchased licenses for both models on 6/16/22. I was able to connect to the radio and read in the current programming. I added a couple of channels, and then tried to write back to the radio. It gave an error, and said that I needed to initialize the radio. I called RT Systems support, and they were not only aware of the issue, but they had already resolved it, and had just published an update a few minutes before I called. I ran the “Check for Updates” process, which installed an updated component, then was able to write to the radio successfully. In contrast, I don’t know how to get technical support directly from AnyTone. The support would be through a third-party reseller, or a community support forum, neither of whom can actually fix the software if there is a problem.
Conclusion
So far, I’m happy with how the RT Systems programmer works, and seems to be a worthwhile improvement over the free AnyTone CPS. I think that it’s worth the nominal investment.