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SignalCheck - Android app to monitor your Wi-Fi/2G/3G/4G LTE/5G-NR signal strengths


mikejeep

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Mike and others,

 

Other apps such as Signal Detector and LTE Discovery also get null GCI, GCI & PCI, or RSRP from time to time.  Most frequently at the start or end of a connection to a site.  I just consider these as incomplete.  Occasionally you will also get GCI of FFFFFFFF, usually just one record at a time.  Rarely a sector will only broadcast GCI FFFFFFFF for a short period of time.

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852 entries deleted. I didn't realize I'd encountered that many clear sites, or even b41 sites xD.

 

Hence my hope that most people would opt to scrub it away. Did the prompt seem clear enough? Adjusting the wording took longer than coding it.

 

Many of yours were probably bogus duplicate entries of B25 and/or B26 sites that had the wrong PLMN showing.. plus with one entry per unique GCI, a typical site could have 6 such entries (3 B25 sectors, 3 B26). The garbage piles up quickly!

 

-Mike

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Hence my hope that most people would opt to scrub it away. Did the prompt seem clear enough? Adjusting the wording took longer than coding it.

 

Many of yours were probably bogus duplicate entries of B25 and/or B26 sites that had the wrong PLMN showing.. plus with one entry per unique GCI, a typical site could have 6 such entries (3 B25 sectors, 3 B26). The garbage piles up quickly!

 

-Mike

It seemed clear to me. There was one thing I found odd, the order of the choices. Normally you see it as: yes, no, maybe later (at least in my experience). However your way probably helps cut down on people accidentally clicking yes and then getting angry with you :P.
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It seemed clear to me. There was one thing I found odd, the order of the choices. Normally you see it as: yes, no, maybe later (at least in my experience). However your way probably helps cut down on people accidentally clicking yes and then getting angry with you :P.

 

It's not my way, it's Android's way -- buttons are coded as "Positive", "Negative", and "Neutral".. the OS decides what order they go in. Somewhere around Android 4.0 they switched the order around. I just go with the flow!

 

-Mike

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That would be great.  AT&T seems to use patterns of 8 here when it comes to the PSC, i.e. 32, 40, 48

 

I haven't looked at the PSC stuff yet for a pattern but here's what I have from my notes (figured I would share in case others need it as well)

 

310-410 AT&T - 1c = 1 carrier(channel), 2c = 2 carrier, etc.

 

HSPA Pattern

 

CID 11961 belongs to site 1196.  The 1 is the sector/carrier designation.

 

The sector and carriers are as follows for the first 3 subset of HSPA channels.  

 

1=1c, 4=2c, 7=3c of the Alpha sector

2=1c, 5=2c, 8=3c of the Beta sector

3=1c, 6=2c, 9=3c of the Gamma sector

 

2nd subset of HSPA

 

In most cases 4000 is added to the site number, in rare cases I've seen 4600 added.  1196 would become 5196.

 

The sector and carriers are as follows for the second subset of HSPA channels.  

(sectors 4-6 seemed to be skipped)

1=4c, 7=5c of the Alpha sector

2=4c, 8=5c of the Beta sector

3=4c, 9=5c of the Gamma sector

 

In summary, 11965 would be Site 1196 Beta C2 and 51969 would be Site 1196 Gamma 5c.

 

 

LTE Pattern

 

Last two digits of GCI to determine the band

 

0F, 10, 11 - B17

16, 17, 19 - B4

08, 09, 0A - B2

00, 01, 02 - B5

84, 85, 86 - B17 indoor DAS

64, 65, 66 - B17 wide area DAS

 

Example GCI - 02C3CC0F  - Remove the sector ID and convert to DEC - 02C3CC becomes 181196.  The first two digits are the market/region ID.  1196 again is the site ID and matches to the HSPA side of the site.  Occasionaly some sites will use the 4c,5c HSPA site IDs with the 4000 added to the number.  I've seen this on older Band 4 upgrades with RRUS11 B4.  I've seen them going back to the original site IDs(non-4000 incremented) when they've been converting them to B17/B4/B2 sites with the AIR21 B4A/B12P antennas with RRUS12 B12 with the A2 B2 backpack.

 

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OK I'm getting some band 41 on my gn4 though I'm not seeing it on the app? Here are my screen shots.

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

Mike said Samsung has issues updating the plmn. It is clearwire band 41. Do you know your band 25 market gci for utah?
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OK I'm getting some band 41 on my gn4 though I'm not seeing it on the app? Here are my screen shots.

f6c3e9491e5d1ffe3975ef831638bd5c.jpgcc0fdefaa084ad2535d0869d15e99289.jpg

 

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

Are you on the beta or the public version?

 

Sent from my SPH-L720T using Tapatalk

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OK I'm getting some band 41 on my gn4 though I'm not seeing it on the app? Here are my screen shots.

 

Uh, Samsung, the word is spelled "enginerring."  That screen is almost certainly in error.

 

AJ

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Mike said Samsung has issues updating the plmn. It is clearwire band 41. Do you know your band 25 market gci for utah?

Not off the top of my head

 

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

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OK I'm getting some band 41 on my gn4 though I'm not seeing it on the app? Here are my screen shots.

Your enginerring screen is showing PLMN "311-49" which really means 311490 but Samsung can't get their act together. That indicates a Clearwire B41 site. However, your Note 4 is reporting PLMN 310120 to Android, which is the default for Sprint.

 

Improper PLMN reporting is an issue that plagues most Samsung devices, and unfortunately there isn't anything I can do about it except yell at Samsung and hope they fix it in a future software update. SignalCheck is not indicating B41 because the phone is not providing correct information to the app.

 

Samsung did release a tool that has fixed issues related to SignalCheck for other users called "Refresh Customization" you can try. I do not know which devices it is compatible with and some people warn of settings getting reset, so use at your own risk: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.refreshDevice

 

Can't wait for the update! I heard a rumor it is coming this weekend but I can no longer find the post.

Sounds like a juicy rumor! The weekend ends today, hmmmm.....

 

-Mike

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The most anticipated software update of your life is finally here.. SignalCheck 4.261 has been released into the wild! It has been pushed to Google Play and should be available within the hour. This is a significant update but my beta crew did a great job so it should be stable. One major bug I am still aware of is the lack of Alerts for those running Android 5.0 (Lollipop) -- I'm still working on that. The option is in the app, but the Alerts never play.

 

A lot of the details have been discussed over the past couple of weeks, but below is the full changelog, roughly prioritized.. as always, thanks for everyone's support!

 

Improved Sprint LTE band 41 identification, including new 8T8R sites.
Resolved issue with PLMN 311490 always showing for Sprint LTE band 41.
Resolved issue with Sprint LTE PLMN failing to update properly.
Band 41 identification is drastically improved.. and "drastically" might be an understatement. It was terrible before, and that's putting it nicely. The only remaining B41 issue appears to be with Samsung devices; many (including the Note 4 and Galaxy S5) are not reporting the proper PLMN, so the app is unable to recognize Clearwire B41 sites. On these devices, users will see a different GCI pattern that matches the Clearwire numbering scheme for their market. Hopefully Samsung fixes this sooner rather than later.
 
Users who have any Clearwire B41 entries in their Site Log will be prompted to delete them the first time they launch the app after upgrading. This is strongly recommended. The B41 identification in previous versions was so unreliable that there is likely a significant accumulation of unreliable data in your log. If you answer "Yes" or "No", you will not be prompted again, so choose "Ask Me Later" if you want to think about it until the next time you bring the app into the foreground. I understand that many of you may have saved some B41 site notes, but again, it was so unreliable, I suggest that you scrub it out and move forward knowing that everything from this point forward will be accurate.
 
Sprint LTE band 41 sites that were not Clearwire sites will share user notes with co-located B25 sites. (Pro)
Thanks to the detective work of S4GRU users, 8T8R sites are now identified within the app. SignalCheck will now link the site notes for B25 and B41 sites, but it requires a bit of confusing explanation. If you have B25 notes already saved for a site, and connect to the B41 side of that same site, you will see the same site note. The same is true in reverse -- if you have a B41 site note saved, once you connect to B25, the note will be linked. However, if you already have separate site notes for B25 and B41, those notes will remain separate UNTIL you edit either one, at which time it will overwrite all notes for that site. Please ask if you have questions about this; I realize it might cause some head-scratching, but it's really a great feature and will save everyone some time as 8T8R construction progresses.
 
Added option to display LTE and GSM neighbor cells. (Pro)
A neighbor cell is another sector in range of your device that is not serving the active connection. For LTE, neighbor PCIs are shown; for WCDMA, neighbor PSCs are shown; and for GSM, the PLMN, CID, and LAC are shown. No other information about neighbor cells is available, so I am not able to absolutely confirm which specific LTE or WCDMA sites the neighbor cells represent. However, I decided to take a stab at it for LTE and display the site notes associated with a site that it MIGHT be. If there is a note saved for the given PCI on the currently connected TAC, the note is displayed with the neighbor cell. There is a margin of error with this; you may be seeing a neighbor PCI that is on another TAC, so the note displayed may be incorrect. There should be a decent distance between these sites, so it should be clear if you are seeing a note from a site that is not in the vicinity.You may see the same PCI shown several times; this is most likely the different bands broadcasting from the same sector.
 
Added options to hide disconnected or unavailable connection types. (Pro)
With the addition of neighbor cells, the information display was spanning beyond a single screen, so it only made sense to include this now. There are a few different options; "Hide All" hides anything that is not conected, "Only Disabled" only hides disabled connections, "Only Wi-Fi" only hides the Wi-Fi display when it is not available, and "None" shows all connection types all the time.
 
Added Site Log fields for strongest signals and the locations they were received. (Pro)
After running the log for awhile, you should be able to plot the information from these new columns to get a good idea of where the site is. The signal strength, latitude, and longitude are recorded.
 
Added display of frequency class for recognized LTE bands (i.e. "LTE 800") on the main screen.
This is pretty self-explanatory; makes it very easy to see the impact of a tri-band network.

 

Sprint LTE band 41 sites that were owned by Clearwire are now marked with an asterisk on the main screen.
Eventually, these sites will be the execptions, as construction progresses on native Sprint sites with 8T8R equipment. Again, a Samsung bug prevents proper Clear B41 recognition on many devices, so nothing will be shown on those.

 

Added display of primary scrambling code (PSC) for GSM sites.
I'm not sure what this is, but I figured out how to get it, so I might as well display it. WCDMA neighbor cells are only identified by their PSC.
 
Resolved issue with disconnected Wi-Fi connections showing -127 dBm signal on Android 5.0.
Lollipop has introduced some changes that impact the app; please report any issues you discover. Alerts are still not working for Lollipop users. It looks like the public launch will be on November 3, so I will hopefully have this fixed very soon.
 
Resolved issue with null GCI and TAC values appearing in the LTE site log. (Pro)
I thought this bug was squashed, but apparently not -- please let me know if the issues continue.
 
Resolved issue with Wi-Fi connections displaying speeds of 0 Mbps on some devices.

The Wi-Fi speed will now be hidden if it is invalid.

 
Changed user site note prompts to capitalize the first letter of each word by default. (Pro)

This was driving me crazy, very happy to have found how to do this!

 
Resolved issue with missing last_time values in the Site Log. (Pro)

The "last_time" column could be null under certain conditions, but that is now fixed.

 
Resolved issue with stale 1X information displayed after connection is lost. (Pro)

The BSL and/or graphic meter would "stick" in certain conditions.

 

Added indicators for Free Mobile UMTS bands 1 and 8 and LTE band 7.
International provider based in France. I will add band identifers for any networks as long as someone can provide me with a site identification pattern to do so.
 
Updated provider database.
Minor update, mostly to international providers.

 

SignalCheck Lite (the free version) will be updated next week, I realize it is a couple of versions behind.

 

-Mike

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The most anticipated software update of your life is finally here.. SignalCheck 4.261 has been released into the wild! It 

-Mike

 

Updated. Thanks for the hardwork

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I never got a prompt to clean the logs (yes, no, ask later) ? Will everyone get said prompt?

 

(yes, I just updated)

 

sent from an underwater dust storm with my Sprint S5

 

Do you have Clearwire B41 in your market?

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Do you have Clearwire B41 in your market?

Well I'm in your hood now, in STL. Near Ferguson (since everyone now knows when that is). I don't have it in Madison though. Just never got prompt, didn't know if we were all supposed to see it.

 

sent from an underwater dust storm with my Sprint S5

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I never got a prompt to clean the logs (yes, no, ask later) ? Will everyone get said prompt?

 

(yes, I just updated)

 

You will only get the prompt if you have any Clearwire B41 entries in your Site Log the first time you open the app after updating. If there are no entries, there is nothing to clean up. If you have a S5, I doubt you will be prompted, because the S5 can't identify Clear B41.

 

Although now I'm wondering if there will be an issue down the road when someone who isn't prompted then saves some Clear B41 entries.. hmm.. uh oh! EDIT: I must have already thought of that, I checked the code.. that won't happen. :)

 

-Mike

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You will only get the prompt if you have any Clearwire B41 entries in your Site Log the first time you open the app after updating. If there are no entries, there is nothing to clean up. If you have a S5, I doubt you will be prompted, because the S5 can't identify Clear B41.

 

Although now I'm wondering if there will be an issue down the road when someone who isn't prompted then saves some Clear B41 entries.. hmm.. uh oh!

 

-Mike

Can you work it to re-prompt and re-clean the entries every 3ish months or something?
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