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

[mikejeep]

Noticed while traveling today that switching between B41 and B25 in West Palm, the Service Provider Code stayed the same between the two... here's an example.

 

B25: 310 120

would flip to:

B41: 311 870

back to :

B25: and Stayed on 311 870 even though it was back to 310 120 in engineering. 

 

Would this be a bug or does it not constantly poll for the information once it receives new?

 

Hmm I think that's a bug I have since resolved but not released yet. It's always listening for any changes to any of the mobile signal values or site information, but there were some issues with quick-changing values (fast handoffs, bouncing between bands quickly, etc) that was freezing things up. Stay tuned..

 

-Mike

[kojitsari]

Sorry for the delay, I'm wrapping up a busy couple of weeks.. working full-time while taking 2 graduate classes and trying to have a social life is no fun at the end of a semester. I will have more time for SignalCheck again now! Of course, Opening Day for the Red Sox is tomorrow, so there's another distraction..

 

As far as beta testers go, I don't need any more right now, but feel free to check in with me down the road. I appreciate your interest and enthusiasm, and I apologize that it's been so long since there has been a public update (it's coming!). Being a Premier Sponsor isn't a requirement, but it does factor in. Robert and the S4GRU community have been very good to me, so I do try to do what I can for those who are the most supportive members of the site. I prefer keeping my beta crew (I am going to keep using that term, I like it haha) at a manageable number because it makes things easier on my end. If I had 100 beta testers, my e-mail would be exploding and I wouldn't know where to begin.

 

 

-Mike

I know what you mean, but hey it wasn't a no:P. You really shouldn't feel bad for having your priorities straight, this isn't your main source of income or anything. Plus I (and id assume others also) are glad you're taking the time to push out what you currently consider a finished product instead of pushing out updates every day. Now if I can just find my calendar app to make a note...

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

 

[mikejeep]

I am finally wrapping up the last part of the next update with a new feature I've been trying to get working.. I call them "site notes". Basically you can enter whatever you want (site location, S4GRU map ID, etc) and it will appear whenever you are connected to that site. It will be based on SID+NID+BID for 1X, PLMN+GCI for LTE, and PLMN+LAC+CID for GSM.

 

I am not implementing this (or logging) it for EV-DO/eHRPD because most devices can't get any information that identifies the site. Also, devices that can't get the GCI will not be able to save LTE notes.

 

Now, before I start finalizing things, I would like some input from you guys.. should LTE notes be tied to the exact GCI? Or would it be better to only match the first 6 characters, ignoring the sector bits? I have it working now to match the entire GCI, but find myself just marking every site as "High School 1", "High School 2", "High School 3" etc. Does anyone find value in separate notes for each LTE sector? It needs to be one way or the other; this is not something I want to make configurable, at least not right now.

 

Any and all opinions appreciated!

 

Thanks,

-Mike

[kojitsari]

I am finally wrapping up the last part of the next update with a new feature I've been trying to get working.. I call them "site notes". Basically you can enter whatever you want (site location, S4GRU map ID, etc) and it will appear whenever you are connected to that site. It will be based on SID+NID+BID for 1X, PLMN+GCI for LTE, and PLMN+LAC+CID for GSM.

 

I am not implementing this (or logging) it for EV-DO/eHRPD because most devices can't get any information that identifies the site. Also, devices that can't get the GCI will not be able to save LTE notes.

 

Now, before I start finalizing things, I would like some input from you guys.. should LTE notes be tied to the exact GCI? Or would it be better to only match the first 6 characters, ignoring the sector bits? I have it working now to match the entire GCI, but find myself just marking every site as "High School 1", "High School 2", "High School 3" etc. Does anyone find value in separate notes for each LTE sector? It needs to be one way or the other; this is not something I will to make configurable, at least not right now.

 

Any and all opinions appreciated!

 

Thanks,

-Mike

I'd ignore the sector bits. If its a site we're regularly on then we'd learn to recognize the sector we're going to be on too. If its one we aren't regularly on then it's not really super useful and if we need to know we'd take the time to figure it out. That's my logic trail at least.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

 

[dkyeager]

I am finally wrapping up the last part of the next update with a new feature I've been trying to get working.. I call them "site notes". Basically you can enter whatever you want (site location, S4GRU map ID, etc) and it will appear whenever you are connected to that site. It will be based on SID+NID+BID for 1X, PLMN+GCI for LTE, and PLMN+LAC+CID for GSM.

 

I am not implementing this (or logging) it for EV-DO/eHRPD because most devices can't get any information that identifies the site. Also, devices that can't get the GCI will not be able to save LTE notes.

 

Now, before I start finalizing things, I would like some input from you guys.. should LTE notes be tied to the exact GCI? Or would it be better to only match the first 6 characters, ignoring the sector bits? I have it working now to match the entire GCI, but find myself just marking every site as "High School 1", "High School 2", "High School 3" etc. Does anyone find value in separate notes for each LTE sector? It needs to be one way or the other; this is not something I want to make configurable, at least not right now.

 

Any and all opinions appreciated!

 

Thanks,

-Mike

I assume you are already differentiating bands elsewhere. Given that, i prefer the entire gci be used.

 

Now how are the one without notes going to be handled? I would divide this into two parts: your market, other markets. For you market an alarm sound will be most useful (think of the red alert from early Startrek), while for other markets leaving it blank or saying unknown would be fine. The alert should be configurable by signal type, ie band 25 lte, 1x800, etc.

 

Thanks for asking.

 

sent by tapatalk from my LS-980 (G2)

 

 

[mikejeep]

I'd ignore the sector bits. If its a site we're regularly on then we'd learn to recognize the sector we're going to be on too. If its one we aren't regularly on then it's not really super useful and if we need to know we'd take the time to figure it out. That's my logic trail at least.

If I went this route, I might put in an option to append the suffix to the display (i.e. note is "High School" but appears as "High School [02]"). It is a little redundant because the GCI would be right there, but not everyone realizes what that represents. That's another reason I'm leaning toward ignoring the sector bits. Users will see useful information with 1/3 (or better) the effort.

 

-Mike

[mikejeep]

I assume you are already differentiating bands elsewhere. Given that, i prefer the entire gci be used.

This feature is entirely independent of anything else in the app. It just lets you literally display a brief note about the site you are connected to. My rationale for ignoring the sector bits is that I see little value in having separate notes for each sector, beyond the actual sector ID (02, 0F, 1B, etc) itself. I suppose someone might want to note the direction of a sector, but they would have to manually determine that on their own, and if they know where the site is, I see limited value in that compared to the extra effort required to make separate notes for all 3 (or 6, for Sprint B26 sites) sectors.

 

Now how are the one without notes going to be handled? I would divide this into two parts: your market, other markets. For you market an alarm sound will be most useful (think of the red alert from early Startrek), while for other markets leaving it blank or saying unknown would be fine. The alert should be configurable by signal type, ie band 25 lte, 1x800, etc.

I don't think an unnoted site is worthy of an alert.. especially if you want separate notes for each sector. That would be a lot of alerts triggering. I was going to hide the note field completely if a site doesn't have one, but I think showing something like "none" would help users realize the feature exists. I could make that optional though.

 

-Mike

[JossMan]

I am finally wrapping up the last part of the next update with a new feature I've been trying to get working.. I call them "site notes". Basically you can enter whatever you want (site location, S4GRU map ID, etc) and it will appear whenever you are connected to that site. It will be based on SID+NID+BID for 1X, PLMN+GCI for LTE, and PLMN+LAC+CID for GSM.

 

 

Any and all opinions appreciated!

 

Thanks,

-Mike

Heck yeah Mike, you rock, I was waiting for something like this to be implemented in your app!  As far as the LTE goes either way would be great for me, tired of wondering what site I am connected too when I get LTE.  

But...if I had to choose I would go the PCI i.e. 100, 269, 438 especially in Ericsson markets where the value is based of 169 after the first initial value.  

[dkyeager]

Mike, my reasoning for alerts was to find new sites or new LTE bands at existing sites while driving.

 

 

sent by tapatalk from my LS-980 (G2)

 

 

[mikejeep]

Heck yeah Mike, you rock, I was waiting for something like this to be implemented in your app!  As far as the LTE goes either way would be great for me, tired of wondering what site I am connected too when I get LTE.  

But...if I had to choose I would go the PCI i.e. 100, 269, 438 especially in Ericsson markets where the value is based of 169 after the first initial value. 

 

I've been working on it for awhile, I want it too! It's done well in my own testing over the past 2 days. The problem with using the PCI is that it not unique across the network.. the range is only 0-503. I promise, with ~39,000 Sprint LTE sites (and many thousand sites for AT&T, Verizon, Tmo, and other providers), they reused a few of them.

 

PLMN+GCI is the only way the app can uniquely identify a site. It's just a matter of choosing whether or not to have one note for all sectors on site 111222xx, or have separate notes for each sector (11122201, 11122202, 11122203, etc).

 

-Mike

[mikejeep]

Mike, my reasoning for alerts was to find new sites or new LTE bands at existing sites while driving.

 

Oh don't worry, that's a totally separate feature that I am working on. My design question is specifically about implementing notes on a site-level or sector-level basis. The more testing I do, the more I am strongly in favor of site-level, since I only care about adding some detail about the site I'm on, not specifics about the sector it is. Again, I will probably have the sector appended anyway if I go that route.

 

-Mike

[travismheim]

I would prefer site level over sector level notes.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

 

[peteyz24]

I would prefer site level over sector level notes.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Same here.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[JossMan]

I've been working on it for awhile, I want it too! It's done well in my own testing over the past 2 days. The problem with using the PCI is that it not unique across the network.. the range is only 0-503. I promise, with ~39,000 Sprint LTE sites (and many thousand sites for AT&T, Verizon, Tmo, and other providers), they reused a few of them.

 

PLMN+GCI is the only way the app can uniquely identify a site. It's just a matter of choosing whether or not to have one note for all sectors on site 111222xx, or have separate notes for each sector (11122201, 11122202, 11122203, etc).

 

-Mike

Understandable, if I had to choose, I'd have to go with the one note for all the site's sectors instead of a note for each sector. 

[bmoses]

Site level is my preference

[UPdownLoAD]

I am finally wrapping up the last part of the next update with a new feature I've been trying to get working.. I call them "site notes". Basically you can enter whatever you want (site location, S4GRU map ID, etc) and it will appear whenever you are connected to that site. It will be based on SID+NID+BID for 1X, PLMN+GCI for LTE, and PLMN+LAC+CID for GSM.

 

I am not implementing this (or logging) it for EV-DO/eHRPD because most devices can't get any information that identifies the site. Also, devices that can't get the GCI will not be able to save LTE notes.

 

Now, before I start finalizing things, I would like some input from you guys.. should LTE notes be tied to the exact GCI? Or would it be better to only match the first 6 characters, ignoring the sector bits? I have it working now to match the entire GCI, but find myself just marking every site as "High School 1", "High School 2", "High School 3" etc. Does anyone find value in separate notes for each LTE sector? It needs to be one way or the other; this is not something I want to make configurable, at least not right now.

 

Any and all opinions appreciated!

 

Thanks,

-Mike

Quite honestly I would just be happy with an update with bugs fixed. I've had quite a few bugs that have been mentioned here, but haven't said anything since you said in early Feb that you resolved at least one of the ones in the Beta. PLEASE just push whatever you have in the beta out, and add features as you go. I know you want to have a polished product before you push it to the masses, but I am now NOT running SCP more than I am.

 

I would rather have daily/weekly updates than nothing at this point. I did go back to 4.19(?) for a bit but was sick of Google telling me to update.

[mikejeep]

Quite honestly I would just be happy with an update with bugs fixed. I've had quite a few bugs that have been mentioned here, but haven't said anything since you said in early Feb that you resolved at least one of the ones in the Beta. PLEASE just push whatever you have in the beta out, and add features as you go. I know you want to have a polished product before you push it to the masses, but I am now NOT running SCP more than I am.

 

I would rather have daily/weekly updates than nothing at this point. I did go back to 4.19(?) for a bit but was sick of Google telling me to update.

COMPLETELY understandable. I am not happy with myself for how long this has taken. Kind of surprised it took this long for someone to make a post like that, because I have been expecting it. Honestly, it's been very frustrating to me; I take a lot of pride in the positive reputation the app has developed. I didn't want to hurt that by pushing out an update that claimed to fix stuff that didn't actually fix it, but I didn't expect it to take 3 months. There have been several points where I thought a beta version was ready to push out to the masses, but then I found another significant issue. Fix one leak, and it causes another one to spring up further down the pipe. If I only had to worry about one wireless provider or one phone manufacturer, it would be much easier.. but that's not how it is.

 

The delay has been mostly due to my lack of free time to tie up these loose ends. Life has been getting in the way lately.. nothing bad, just busy. The logging and site notes features evolved along the way as an easier method to help myself debug some problems I was seeing in the app. It's not the reason an update isn't out yet.

 

You'd probably be surprised at the amount of negative feedback I get every time there is an update. It's a delicate balance on my end. I certainly know that I'll never please everyone though.

 

I'm not going to publicly give a deadline for an update, because I know how that goes--come on Sprint, where is that N5 update you promised--but that doesn't mean it's not coming soon. The sooner I get this pushed out, the sooner I'm not stressing myself out about it!

 

-Mike

[kojitsari]

COMPLETELY understandable. I am not happy with myself for how long this has taken. Kind of surprised it took this long for someone to make a post like that, because I have been expecting it. Honestly, it's been very frustrating to me; I take a lot of pride in the positive reputation the app has developed. I didn't want to hurt that by pushing out an update that claimed to fix stuff that didn't actually fix it, but I didn't expect it to take 3 months. There have been several points where I thought a beta version was ready to push out to the masses, but then I found another significant issue. Fix one leak, and it causes another one to spring up further down the pipe. If I only had to worry about one wireless provider or one phone manufacturer, it would be much easier.. but that's not how it is.

 

The delay has been mostly due to my lack of free time to tie up these loose ends. Life has been getting in the way lately.. nothing bad, just busy. The logging and site notes features evolved along the way as an easier method to help myself debug some problems I was seeing in the app. It's not the reason an update isn't out yet.

 

You'd probably be surprised at the amount of negative feedback I get every time there is an update. It's a delicate balance on my end. I certainly know that I'll never please everyone though.

 

I'm not going to publicly give a deadline for an update, because I know how that goes--come on Sprint, where is that N5 update you promised--but that doesn't mean it's not coming soon. The sooner I get this pushed out, the sooner I'm not stressing myself out about it!

 

-Mike

I for one haven't felt the need to because you've explained why there's a hold up and this is a on the side thing for you. Sure sometimes I have to kill Signal check and restart it but its not that big of a pain. If this was your job I'd be more willing to hassle you a bit like certain companies(*cough Google, lg, and sprint cough*).

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

 

[KD8JBF]

Hey Mike! 

 

I agree with your stance on the Site Level notes and not Sector level. When I am out mapping, I usually only verify one or two sectors anyways. I'm a "Fast Mapper" Meaning I don't drive around the entire tower, I just drive by it, grab a screen shot of a sector or two, and move on to the next. Being able to just jot down the Site Level would be best (At least in my situation) I could see it being a pain to possibly enter site info more than once while driving on to the next. IMHO...

 

Also,

 

Is there a way to "pop up" your site note after putting one in? Or editing later? So if you see a certain GCI Pop up, it can pop the note up with it, like saying, "High School Site" or "Mall Site"

 

Thanks for the great work buddy!!

 

Kris

[mikejeep]

Is there a way to "pop up" your site note after putting one in? Or editing later? So if you see a certain GCI Pop up, it can pop the note up with it, like saying, "High School Site" or "Mall Site"

It's very basic for now.. the note will be displayed on-screen with the rest of the signal information. Clicking anywhere on a section (title, signal meter, or signal information) will open the pop-up to edit that site, whether a note already exists or not. Down the road I plan to add import/export functions somehow.

 

-Mike

[gr8nuguy]

mike- the KK update for lg g2 disabled the debug screen access through your app, but it works when i do ##debug#   just thought i would let ya know

[mikejeep]

mike- the KK update for lg g2 disabled the debug screen access through your app, but it works when i do ##debug# just thought i would let ya know

Ahhhh that is not cool! If you have a chance, please click the shortcut in the app, then go into About > Send Diagnostics.. that should capture the error details for me. Please make a note on the diagnostics screen that the debug screen was failing, I get a lot of reports so it's impossible to keep track in my head.

 

Thanks,

-Mike

[gr8nuguy]

sent

[mikejeep]

mike- the KK update for lg g2 disabled the debug screen access through your app, but it works when i do ##debug#   just thought i would let ya know

 

Looking at the logs you sent me, I can see what happened -- LG added a new security permission that prevents that screen from being launched any third-party app.

 

SignalCheck already includes that permission, but it is almost always stripped out by the system when the app is installed. This is generally why the system shortcuts don't work on some devices.. I know how to trigger the screen, but the system blocks it at a level beyond my reach. Unfortunately, there isn't anything I can do.. there is no way around Android security permissions (and as I have stated before, that isn't a bad thing). 

 

-Mike

[JossMan]

Looking at the logs you sent me, I can see what happened -- LG added a new security permission that prevents that screen from being launched any third-party app.

 

-Mike

Is this the same security permission that Samsung has that keeps SignalCheck from accessing the Galaxy S3's DEBUG screen as well?