Drivers for USB cables to program Ham radios

Support and Help
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1

I am using Chirp software, and have 2 different radio types I want to be able to program using Chirp. One is a Baofeng, with your typical “2-pin” cable for these radios. The other is a Kenwood TS-440S, which has a cable that is USB on one side, and goes into the microphone plug on the other end. These were mostly working in Windows, though sometimes I would pick the wrong one, and just go back and switch them.

  1. So, my first question is, does Ubuntu/linux pick up what cable type and what driver to use automatically?
  2. Next question is, if no to #1, how do I go about troubleshooting this?
  3. I guess I have to figure out the brand and model of cable?
  4. Can I get any of this information from my working Windows system?
  5. Can it use the same driver?
  6. How does one install drivers on Ubuntu/linux, anyhow?
    Thank you.
2

Hi,

I moved your post to the correct category and added relevant tags.

Thanks.

3

I don’t think I know how to find the different categories. Plus, I would have put this under communications (if that category exists) or drivers, not audio visual.

4

Generally speaking, almost all topics would fall under Support and Help.

For a brief guide on which tags are currently available for this category, see here.

Thanks.

1 Like
5

I wonder if “peripherals” might be the best tag then.

6

You can edit and add whichever tags you think are the best fit.

7

The drivers for most of those cables should be already present on your system so there is nothing extra to install. Typically most of those cables are just USB to serial adapters. You can use dmesg to see the device attach. You should see something like this -

[98788.402947] usb 1-9: new full-speed USB device number 7 using xhci_hcd
[98788.526993] usb 1-9: New USB device found, idVendor=1a86, idProduct=7523, bcdDevice=81.34
[98788.527003] usb 1-9: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[98788.527007] usb 1-9: Product: USB Serial
[98788.708944] usbcore: registered new interface driver ch341
[98788.708966] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for ch341-uart
[98788.708985] ch341 1-9:1.0: ch341-uart converter detected
[98788.709492] usb 1-9: ch341-uart converter now attached to ttyUSB0

The last line is helpful as you can see that it is ttyUSB0. if you add another programming cable it would increment and be ttyUSB1 and so on.

lsusb is another command to add to the toolbox, especially when you pair it with dmesg.

Bus 001 Device 007: ID 1a86:7523 QinHeng Electronics CH340 serial converter

The helpful thing here is you can see the manufacturer which can let you know which device is which.
You will want to make sure your user has the dialout group so that you can access those devices.

Hopefully this helps you to get started.

3 Likes
8

Thanks. Will need to look that over. I am the only user, at least for now.

1 Like
9

This topic was automatically closed after 29 days. New replies are no longer allowed.

11

Topic reopened at user request.

12

I tried dmesg, but that threw an error. How does one use this command?

Running lsusb came up with:
image

I am guessing it is the Chinese one, second to last. How do I make that come up here?
Running Chirp in Wine, I get:
image

Running Chirp in Ubuntu, I get:
image

Can’t get it working either way. I will now have to go back to my Windows 10 computer to program the radio. This whole Ubuntu Linux thing is not as easy as I was told it would be.

13

For reference, see also this post:

14

image

15

Open a terminal and take a look at /dev/ttyUSB0:

ogra@styx:~$ ls -lh /dev/ttyUSB0
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 511, 0 Jul 19 15:15 /dev/ttyUSB0
ogra@styx:~$

You will likely also find yours owned by the dialout group …
Check if your user is in that group using the groups command:

ogra@styx:~$ groups
ogra adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev users lpadmin lxd
ogra@styx:~$

Seemingly not … so lets add it:

ogra@styx:~$ sudo adduser ogra dialout
ogra@styx:~$

Log out and back in again … and check the groups command again … now you should be in the dialout group and be able to access the USB serial port …

1 Like
16

Screenshot From 2025-07-19 13-30-23

I have not yet rebooted. I will do that now.

17

Hey!!!

Looks like the reboot fixed it. Seems to be working.

THANK YOU!

I am still not sure which install is the “pip” one, and which is the “wine” one.

D.

18

If the issue is resolved please mark post 15 as the solution.

It gives the user who helped you credit and also lets the community know this has a workable solution which will close the topic.

Thanks

19

This topic was automatically closed 3 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.