Xiegu X6100 and X6200 Notes

This page covers our current knowledge of the Xiegu X6100 and X6200 radios.

Background

These radios are made by the Chinese Xiegu radio company. They run an embedded linux where the root password is something like “abc”. Numerous developer “hacker” groups have come together to create alternate firmware images with very interesting and useful modifications. The radio is popular with the hobbyist community due to the relatively low cost. Perhaps most unique here is that the radio includes a special embedded version of wfview’s server, wfserver. This allows wfview clients to connect to the radio. The X6200 is an updated version of the X6100.

Reputation

The radio is known for having poor receiver performance. Specifically, it has poor adjacent channel rejection and it also creates several HF noise sources which of course it receives. These things can’t really be patched against. The built-in wfserver is also known to have several limitations and bugs. But it’s also known as being a very fun little radio, even gaining popularity with SWL users.

Licensing and Development

Xiegu asked us, the wfview developers, if we could help them add a server to the radio. And while the wfview project team refused to sign an NDA and refused to work on any closed source software, we did write a description of the work that would need to be done in order to run wfserver on the radio. Our expectation was that Xiegu would clone the wfview repository, make minor modifications, and send us those modifications for potential inclusion in our repository. The GNU/GPL license of wfview requires them to ship the source code with the binary (or at least a link to the code) if they made modifications. To the surprise of nobody, the rig shipped without satisfying this requirement. Worse yet, the modified wfserver and backend they used shipped with an incomplete (and at times erroneous) CI-V implementation. Can we fix that? Not easily, we lack the source! But some folks have had success with reverse engineering efforts. Look at some of the alternate firmware for examples.

Radio Setup

  • To transmit audio, you must set the mode to USB-D or LSB-D. This is how the Xiegu knows to switch inputs away from the Mic connector. Supposedly in this mode, the radio listens to ACC, USB, and LAN audio. It’s not clear on if it’s a sum of those sources or “whichever is active”
  • You also need to log in to the unit and make a change to a configuration file. Stop the wfview server and then log in to the radio over ssh.
    • file path: /etc/xgradio/wfserver.ini
    • Change:
      • Find this line:
        • AudioSystem=0
      • Change it to this:
        • AudioSystem=1

 

Key limitations of the radio

  • The radio self-identifies as an Icom IC-705. Thus, wfview will talk to it using the IC-705 command set. Many commands will fail or produce unexpected results. We do have a rig file for this radio, which was provided by the community. You can remove the IC-705 and use the Xiegu file instead to alleviate some of these issues, but not all.Search for it on our support forum; we cannot include it in our normal repo because the ID of the radio conflicts with that of the IC-705.
  • The spectrum frequency axis is not reported correctly.

 

How to fix it

The radio’s embedded server, back end, and GUI need a few fixes. Xiegu, if you’re listening, make these changes!

  • Allow the user to set the default CI-V address
  • Allow the user to set the 0x19 0x00 Model ID byte. You can default to the IC-705 but you should provide some recommended alternative addresses and/or free entry of an address.
  • Fix the scope data frequency information. It’s easy.
  • Default the audio system to “1” as this is known to work much better
  • Document the USB-D and LSB-D requirement for transmit audio
  • Release the modified source code for wfserver. It will be a great gesture of kindness and goodwill towards the amateur radio and open source community. And it will allow others to help maintain the wfserver portion of your offering. We could have been making updates to it all these years if we just had the source code. Think about how much better the radio would have become! You would have sold many more if this software was easier to fix.

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