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chirp

Reads, edits and writes the memory channels of hundreds of radios

What it does

Reads the memory image out of a handheld or mobile transceiver over its programming cable, presents the channels as a spreadsheet -- frequency, tone, offset, name, power -- lets you edit them, and writes the image back. It also imports from other radios, from CSV, and from online repeater directories.

Why you would want it

Programming a modern handheld from its own keypad is genuinely awful, and the manufacturer software is Windows-only, per-model, and frequently worse. CHIRP does every common radio from one interface, and it lets you keep a channel list as a file that can be edited, versioned and copied to the next radio. For anyone with more than one radio it is not optional.

Before it will work

The right programming cable, and access to its serial device -- the dialout group. Many cheap cables use counterfeit chips; see below.

How it installs

  • apt: chirp
  • AHRL installs a bundled wheel with pipx install --system-site-packages run as the user through pkexec, then generates a run_chirp wrapper because pipx installs into the user's home (inventory unit 84). Debian packages it, so this is apt -- and it is one of the few packages in this catalog where Parrot differs from Debian: Parrot carries a patched 1:20250530-1parrot1 against Debian 13's 1:20250502-1, with Ubuntu and Kali on 1:20251108-1 and Mint on 1:20240224-1 (measured 2026-08-28). CHIRP is versioned by release date, so those gaps are months of radio support.

Known problems

Counterfeit Prolific and FTDI cables are the dominant problem in this whole area. A cable may enumerate, appear in dmesg, and still fail to communicate, because the driver detects the clone and refuses. Buy from a known source. Always download from the radio before uploading to it: the downloaded image is your only backup, and a wrong model selection can write an image the radio cannot boot from. Some radios are known to CHIRP only in a development build, which is why the version spread across targets matters. The packaged executables are chirpw (the GUI) and chirpc (the CLI) -- there is no chirp binary, so typing the package name launches nothing (verified on Parrot 7.3, 2026-08-29; AHRL users will also miss its generated run_chirp wrapper, which we do not reproduce).

Keeping it current

  • probe: apt policy
  • strategy: apt_upgrade
  • Upstream releases continuously and versions by date. New radio models appear in new builds and nowhere else, so a radio that is not in the list is often a matter of the version rather than of support.

Where to get help with the software itself

The CHIRP project. Its own site carries per-model instructions, which are the answer to most "does it support my radio" questions.

Source: catalog/packages/chirp.yaml