Quick Start Guide for your Network Radio

Quick Start Guide for your Network Radio

So you bought a Network Radio and now you are holding that piece of world wide communication possibilities in your hands and are wondering what’s next…
We’ve all been there. With this guide I will give you some tips and resources how to configure your device and links to some interesting resources.

It all seems a bit complicated and technical but once you cut trough the set up and installation, it’s a walk in the park!

Get rid of everything you don’t need on your phone

First of all you need to make your device as clean as possible. Most of the devices are developed in China and sometimes they sneak in a little mal- or spyware.
Depending on your technical skills there are 2 ways of doing this.

  1. Flash your Network Radio ROM.
    • In the network community we have great people, like NR001, who clean out the firmware of those Radios and provide you with a clean and safe version. For Free, respect that!
    • How you install the proper firmware on your device is described here: How to use the SP Flash Tool . You might be Technical enough to do this or you need help from a tech savvy friend in order to get this fixed.
    • Once this is done you will have a clean safe software version of your Network Radio and are ready to configure your device for Zello use.
  2. Clean it the best as you can:
    • In the case that you’re not tech savvy and all of the people you know in the world aren’t either, you can do two things:
      • Install a network tracker/blocker on your device that tracks/blocks all unnecessary traffic from your device. (explained later in how to add apps to your device )
      • Delete all preinstalled apps that you don’t need or know. There should only be two necessary apps on your device to have it run smooth: Zello & Settings. Settings being a native android app, so that will always be there. All the rest is optional. A Google Play Store might come in handy but is not required. We can bypass that.

Configue the mobile & wireless connections on your device

Install a sim card and configure your wireless settings. At least one of them is necessary to have a working device. How to config these settings can be found in this manual: How to setup a Screenless Network Radio , the first part up till the “language chapter” in the manual is generic for every kind of device. The rest is more specific for screenless devices.

Install the right software on your device

For installing & configuring software on your Network Radio I strongly advise you to install Vysor on your PC/MAC. This wil save you loads of time of staring at a little screen ticking impossible small key tabs with your fat fingers 😁.
Manual can be found here to install & use Vysor.


There are two ways of installing apps on your device.

Google Play Store:
If you have a Google PlayStore on your device, it’s easy. You just login in with your Google Account. I suggest that you create a clean gmail account for using with your Network radios, especially when you’re still running the Factory ROM.
After logging in, you can search and download Zello and install it. The good thing on having a Play Store on your device is that you can easily update apps directly from the Play Store. The bad thing is that we don’t know how long Google will support a Play Store on these devices. Luckily we can always bypass that.

Vysor and APK installation:
As mentioned above Vysor is a great tool for configuring and maintaining your device.
Once you have Vysor installed and running you can use the Windows Explorer to drop files in the phone storage of your device. In case of a MAC you can use Android File Transfer to transfer files to your device.

Now the only thing you have to do is find the right APK’s to drag ‘n drop on your device.
For Zello there is only one address that can be trusted: www.zello.com/android/
(There are tons of APK sites & downloads with crappy or suspicious apk’s.)

It will install itself or you have to double click it via the file browser on your device.
Login, configure Zello as desired and start talking.

  • Installing other APK’s is as easy: a safe source for is www.apkmirror.com
  • A decent Network Tracker/Blocker like Netguard.
  • Button Mapper: (Remap your keys by flar2) is almost impossible not to use on a Network Radio.

Usefull Links & Resources: