The UHF handheld that runs OpenRTX and talks M17. The three screens, frequency entry, the Macro Menu, the whole menu tree, and the two settings that decide whether you hear anybody. Condensed from the detailed users manual.
Read this first, because it explains most of what looks broken
There is no codeplug. The menu has Banks, Channels and Contacts, and all three say the same thing when you open them: not supported at this time, this will be used once the CPS is available.
So in practice this is a VFO radio. You type a frequency, you set a destination address, you talk. Nothing is stored in channels because the channel system is not finished. If you came to this radio expecting to load a codeplug the way you would on a DMR handheld, that is why nothing works the way you expect.
A UHF handheld covering 400 to 527 MHz, running the open source OpenRTX firmware, and doing two things: analog FM, and M17 digital. Power is 1 watt or 5 watts. The manual documents firmware 0.3.6, with GPS arriving in 0.3.7.
M17 is an open protocol using Codec 2 as its vocoder, so unlike DMR, D-STAR, C4FM, NXDN and P25 there is no proprietary vocoder chip and no licence involved. That is the whole point of the radio.
There are two radios sharing this manual. The CS7000 M17 does M17 and FM. The CS7000 M17 PLUS can also run as a DMR radio, and which one it becomes is chosen at power on.
| To start in | Hold while turning on |
|---|---|
| M17 mode | Top orange button and SK3 together |
| DMR mode | Top orange button and SK2 together |
The radio remembers the last choice and comes back up in it. From bootloader version B7.06, released 16 December 2024, you only need to press the side key rather than the combination.
In M17 mode the PLUS behaves exactly like the plain CS7000 M17, so everything below applies to both.
| Screen | How you get there | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Frequency | The normal screen | Transmit, receive, and change frequency. |
| Macro Menu | Press TK1, top left | The things you change often: CTCSS, bandwidth, mode, power, brightness, lock. |
| Menu | Press OK from the frequency screen | Everything else, including your callsign and the CAN. |
Up and down step by whatever Settings → Radio → Step is set to. The choices are 1.0, 5.0, 6.25, 10.0, 12.5, 15.0, 20.0, 25.0, 50.0 and 100.0 kHz.
The entry screen wants seven digits for receive and seven for transmit, top line then bottom line.
Pressing OK early pads the rest with zeros. Type 4 then OK and you get 400.0000.
Transmit frequency comes from one of two places, and they are linked:
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| The frequency | Receive. It swaps to the transmit frequency while PTT is held. |
| Battery, top right | All green is fully charged. |
| Bar above the numbers | Received signal strength. |
| Orange line on that bar | The squelch level. Above it, the speaker opens. |
| Line below the frequency | Volume. |
| Right of "FM" | The CTCSS frequency, when CTCSS is on. |
| Right of the frequency | E, D or ED for encode, decode, or both. |
Receive and transmit look different in M17, which they do not in FM.
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Bar above the numbers | Received signal strength. |
| Green line above that bar | Microphone level. It only moves while you are transmitting. |
| Line below the frequency | Volume. |
| ALL, or a callsign | Who the transmitting station is calling. ALL means everybody. A callsign means only that station. |
A quirk worth knowing
If the incoming call is addressed to a callsign that is not yours, you still see who is transmitting, but you do not hear the audio. The screen tells you there is traffic and the speaker stays quiet. That is working as designed, not a fault.
The callsign on the transmit screen is who your signal is for, not who you are. If it shows ALL you are calling everyone in range. If it shows a callsign, only that radio will hear you.
In M17 mode, # opens the destination address. One to nine characters. Pressing # twice puts it back to ALL. Press OK to lock in whatever you typed.
The Channel Access Numbers still have to match, unless you have turned CAN Rx Check off.
The same map is used for the destination address and for your callsign.
| Key | Gives | Key | Gives |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 6 | M, N, O, 6 |
| 2 | A, B, C, 2 | 7 | P, Q, R, S, 7 |
| 3 | D, E, F, 3 | 8 | T, U, V, 8 |
| 4 | G, H, I, 4 | 9 | W, X, Y, Z, 9 |
| 5 | J, K, L, 5 | 0 | 0, space |
| * | hyphen, slash | Others | ignored |
While entering a callsign, the up and down arrows back up one character at a time.
The manual prints key 6 as "M, M, O" in both places it appears. That is evidently a typo for M, N, O, since N has to live somewhere and no other key carries it.
Press TK1, the top left button. Watch for the icon to the left of "Macro Menu": release TK1 while it is showing and the menu latches. Release while it is not there and it does not. A quick press of TK1 from inside the menu returns you to the main screen.
Then press a number:
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| 1 | CTCSS encode down one step. Wraps from 67.0 Hz round to 254.1 Hz. |
| 2 | CTCSS encode up one step. Wraps from 254.1 Hz round to 67.0 Hz. |
| 3 | CTCSS mode: blank for none, D decode only, E encode only, E+D both. |
| 4 | Bandwidth, 25 kHz or 12.5 kHz. |
| 5 | FM mode or M17 mode. |
| 6 | Power, 1 watt or 5 watts. |
| 7 | Brightness down. The number after B- is the level, 100 being brightest. |
| 8 | Brightness up. |
| 9 | Lock or unlock. Locked, the keypad is dead and the menu offers Unlck. |
Two things about the Macro Menu
Set item 5 to M17 and items 1, 2, 3 and 4 stop working. CTCSS and bandwidth are analog ideas and do not apply.
In analog mode the up and down arrows set the squelch level from inside the Macro Menu. This was only documented in version 1.4 of the manual.
Fifty tones, 67.0 to 254.1 Hz.
| 67.0 | 69.3 | 71.9 | 74.4 | 77.0 | 79.7 | 82.5 | 85.4 | 88.5 | 91.5 |
| 94.8 | 97.4 | 100.0 | 103.4 | 107.2 | 110.9 | 114.8 | 118.8 | 123.0 | 127.3 |
| 131.8 | 136.5 | 141.3 | 146.2 | 151.4 | 156.7 | 159.8 | 162.2 | 165.5 | 167.9 |
| 171.3 | 173.8 | 177.3 | 179.9 | 183.5 | 186.2 | 189.9 | 192.8 | 196.6 | 199.5 |
| 203.5 | 206.5 | 210.7 | 218.1 | 225.7 | 229.1 | 233.6 | 241.8 | 250.3 | 254.1 |
OK from the frequency screen. Up and down to move, OK to enter, Back to leave.
| Item | Contains |
|---|---|
| Banks | ⚠️ Not supported yet. Waiting on the CPS. |
| Channels | ⚠️ Not supported yet. Waiting on the CPS. |
| Contact | ⚠️ Not supported yet. Waiting on the CPS. |
| Settings | Display, GPS, Radio, M17, Accessibility, Default Settings |
| Info | Firmware version and parameters. Read only. |
| About | The OpenRTX developers. |
| Item | Values |
|---|---|
| Brightness | 5 to 100 in steps of 5. |
| Timer | Off, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 seconds, then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, 30 and 45 minutes, then 1 hour. Off means the display stays on permanently. |
Added in firmware 0.3.7 and later: GPS Enabled, GPS Set Time, UTC Timezone. Depending on where the list is scrolled, either the top or the bottom entry is hidden.
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Offset | Typed on the keypad, OK to lock in. Zero means transmit equals receive. |
| Direction | + adds the offset to the receive frequency, - subtracts it. |
| Step | 1.0, 5.0, 6.25, 10.0, 12.5, 15.0, 20.0, 25.0, 50.0, 100.0 kHz. This is what the arrows move by. |
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Callsign | Typed on the keypad using the character map above. Up and down back up one character. OK locks it in. Enter it and the startup screen shows it. |
| CAN | Channel Access Number, 0 to 15. |
| CAN Rx Check | ON or OFF. |
CAN and CAN Rx Check, the pair that decides whether you hear anyone
The CAN is M17's equivalent of a CTCSS tone. If a station transmits with a CAN that does not match yours, you will not hear them.
CAN Rx Check set to OFF is promiscuous mode. The radio then hears the other station whatever their CAN is. If you are listening around and hearing nothing, this is the first setting to check, and the one to turn off while you find out what CAN a machine is actually using.
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Macro Latch | ON latches the Macro Menu after a 700 ms press of TK1, so it stays open once you let go. Meant for operators with reduced mobility. OFF means TK1 has to be held down while you press the number. |
| Voice | Off by default. The steps are keyboard beeps, then three levels of spoken prompts of increasing verbosity, for vision impaired operators. |
| Phonetic | ON spells words that are not in the voice prompt table using the ITU phonetic alphabet. OFF uses ordinary language phonemes. |
Worth knowing, because this is an open project rather than a product from one company, and the manual names them all.
| Part | Who |
|---|---|
| The M17 protocol | Wojciech Kaczmarski, SP5WWP. The name M17 came from part of the address of his ham club. |
| The original firmware | Niccolo Izzo IU2KIN, Silvano Seva IU2KWO, Federico Amedeo Izzo IU2NUO and Federik Saraci IU2NRO. |
| Making it run on these radios | Silvano Seva, IU2KWO. |
| Codec 2, the vocoder | David Rowe, VK5DGR. |
| Version | What changed |
|---|---|
| 1.0 | Initial release. |
| 1.1 | Summary at the front, shortcuts and hints, change log at the back. |
| 1.2 | First complete release. |
| 1.3 | CS7000 M17 PLUS startup, the green bar in M17 transmit, the Info screen, and the GPS parameters. Valid for firmware 0.3.7 and later. |
| 1.4 | How to adjust the analog squelch from the Macro Menu. |
Condensed from Using the CS7000 M17 Radio, Detailed Users Manual version 1.4, 2 January 2025, Connect Systems Inc. This sheet is a summary and does not replace the manual. Connect Systems also publish a service and programming manual, firmware update instructions, and separate documents on converting between the M17 and DMR protocols, none of which are covered here. M17 is an open protocol; Codec 2 is the work of David Rowe VK5DGR.