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

[Nickel]

Guys, I doubt USCC has MFBI going on yet.

[Jeffrey_J]

Mike - 

 

From your testing/coding of the neighboring cell feature, how confident are you that every signal/PCI that shows up in the neighbor cell list is an actual live signal and the PCI for it is accurate?

 

the reason i'm asking is i have seen quite a few PCI show up in the neighbor cell list that don't match any PCI that we have recorded. I've spent the last 3 weeks driving around re-logging the PCI of the towers in my area to make sure they were accurate and hadn't changed since we first logged them. after doing this i'm still seeing PCI that don't exist in our spreadsheet.

...

PCI 496 is not in our spreadsheet, and not only is it not in our spreadsheet but at the -99 signal its showing any tower that would be close enough to show that signal i've reconfirmed the PCI for.

 

and its not just a one time thing either, i've seen that PCI show back up driving through the same area on a different day.

 

See this post

I have found a total of 14 sites that is not in our spreadsheet for about 40 miles.

[bmoses]

thanks for the response! thats basically what i was looking for, confirmation that these should be valid signals/PCI that its showing. now to figure out where they are coming from 

 

not a big deal on the TAC thing for the neighbor cell notes, just made it hard tracking down these unknown PCI when i would connect to a tower on a different TAC then all the others around me and all the sudden i have 7 sites showing up on the neighbor cell list with no sites notes but they are all actual sprint towers just not showing the site note cause of the different TAC

 

in conclusion, i would accept that they were sites many miles away that i'm seeing a fleeting signal from of a PCI we don't have if the DB it was showing was -120 or higher, however when i'm seeing a signal of -90dbm thats not a tower thats far away, and when i have confirmed and reconfirmed all the PCI on each band of every tower around me, i'm left with nothing else but to think these are non-sprint signals my phone is seeing.....

[mikejeep]

...i'm left with nothing else but to think these are non-sprint signals my phone is seeing.....

Android reports a PLMN with each neighbor cell, however I have yet to discover an instance where it was actually valid. If they could get that fixed, it might provide some insight as to what we were seeing.

 

One thing I have noticed is that Clearwire sites do not appear in the neighbor cell list unless I am on a Clearwire connection, and Sprint sites do not appear unless I am on a Sprint connection. Even when on B41 for either network. That makes me think that any neighbor cells you see are on the same PLMN you are connected to. That would rule out USCC or any other provider.

 

-Mike

[gnoj]

Guys, I doubt USCC has MFBI going on yet.

If a roaming deal is imminent, I don't see why not. I'm sure they've at least field tested it by now.

[dkyeager]

Since b26 came to my part of Columbus and they went to bsl for each sector and I added notes for all our sites, I am now getting one neighbor cell on my G2, which disappears in a second when TAC and connected appears. Any thoughts?

[bosox801]

Mike SCP has been crashing at least once a day on my note 4? I can't isolate the issue what can I do to help you figure it out or is there a known issue?

 

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

[jreuschl]

Mike SCP has been crashing at least once a day on my note 4? I can't isolate the issue what can I do to help you figure it out or is there a known issue?

 

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

Haven't had any issues like that on my N4.

[mikejeep]

Mike SCP has been crashing at least once a day on my note 4? I can't isolate the issue what can I do to help you figure it out or is there a known issue?

Do you have the Location Service enabled? Try disabling that and see if it improves. I have suddenly been getting random force closes also, and I tracked it to that. Since it started happening out of nowhere, my guess is a background Google Services update might have gone through that has some sort of glitch. I made some tweaks to the app that might circumvent it but I'm not sure yet.

 

If you don't have the Location Service enabled, try sending me a diagnostic report or logcat right after it crashes so I can see what's up.

 

-Mike

[mikejeep]

I was digging through my logs this morning and I might have been wrong about Clear neighbor cells sites only appearing when on a Clear PLMN. I am now wondering if these "phantom" neighbor cells many of us have seen are actually Clear sites that are difficult to connect to because they are trumped by nearby Sprint sites (or perhaps in testing)... just an educated guess...?

 

-Mike

[Flompholph]

I learned something new today and thought I would share it. I learned Google sheets allows if statements so if you add a new column and then put the following pointing at the provider column it easily maps the SCP log for you. I had to zoom in to see the pink pins they get covered you may want to change the pin colors.

=if(C2="Sprint","ylw_blank",if(C2="Sprint B26","orange_blank","pink_blank"))

 

[Ascertion]

I experienced the status bar icon going away again... When I tried to get a log, it was persistent to not go away. Lol

 

Here's the screenshots of the problem though.

 

 

Sent from my LG-LS980

[gnoj]

I was digging through my logs this morning and I might have been wrong about Clear neighbor cells sites only appearing when on a Clear PLMN. I am now wondering if these "phantom" neighbor cells many of us have seen are actually Clear sites that are difficult to connect to because they are trumped by nearby Sprint sites (or perhaps in testing)... just an educated guess...?

Could be, but that wouldn't explain the mystery PCI's in non-Clear areas. For example, Des Moines only has a couple protection sites, and I don't believe they've received LTE yet.

[pokefan02]

I came across a weird problem Saturday. SCP was not displaying the PCI for the tower I was connected to but was displaying the neighbor cell PCI's. Today my M8 is displaying everything correctly.

 

Sent from my HTC M8

[mikejeep]

I experienced the status bar icon going away again... When I tried to get a log, it was persistent to not go away. Lol

Aha.. I think I see the issue. Your phone is reporting it is connected to "CDMA", not 1X. I don't think I've ever seen that out in the wild, but I do remember it being a possible connection type. Refresh my memory -- is this when WiFi Calling is active? I will have to do some testing to see how to work with this.

 

Could be, but that wouldn't explain the mystery PCI's in non-Clear areas. For example, Des Moines only has a couple protection sites, and I don't believe they've received LTE yet.

Good point, but perhaps it explains the mystery in Clear areas. The more I investigate it in my area, the more plausible it seems.

 

I came across a weird problem Saturday. SCP was not displaying the PCI for the tower I was connected to but was displaying the neighbor cell PCI's. Today my M8 is displaying everything correctly.

If the PCI being reported is null or invalid (outside the range 0-503 I believe), the app hides it. I can't explain why it might appear or disappear, but that's how SignalCheck handles it.

 

-Mike

[Ascertion]

Aha.. I think I see the issue. Your phone is reporting it is connected to "CDMA", not 1X. I don't think I've ever seen that out in the wild, but I do remember it being a possible connection type. Refresh my memory -- is this when WiFi Calling is active? I will have to do some testing to see how to work with this.

 

-Mike

It's on my LG G2 running stock ZVE (4.4.2).  PRL is 51103 (stock PRL for me.)  and no WiFi calling (I wish my model had this capability. lol)

[bmoses]

just adding some more data to the phantom PCI's

 

PCI 233 is one that i can see and track down regularly, total i've probably seen close 20 or more PCI that we don't have recorded as sprint PCI's in our market, most of those i see while i'm out driving and may not see them again. The 233 one i've been trying to track down since i see it repeatedly.

 

Here is a shot of the best signal i've seen from it

 

and here is a map of the area where i was when i took that

 

the blue pins are sprint sites with confirmed and re-confirmed PCI's. The black dot is where i was when i took the screenshot. the green dot is an AT&T site, the red dot is a verizon/tmobile site, the north blue dot is a USCC/Tmobile site, and the south blue dot is USCC and maybe 1 other carrier that i'm not sure of, there are 2 racks there but i only found permits for USCC.

 

out of the 3 sprint sites only the one at the VA hospital has another carrier on it, which is AT&T.

 

I also see PCI 233 at my work which is probably 4ish miles (as the crow flies) straight north of where i am in the map screenshot. so that would rule out the 2 towers north of my position in that shot.

 

i'm open to any ideas on where 233 PCI could be coming from.... -87db is a pretty strong signal and its not coming from any sprints sites in that picture.... even if i were to expand the view out some more to include the next closest sprint towers i've re-confirmed the PCI on all of those too....

 

i do have a work verizon S4 and a coworker has a Note 2 on USCC, unfortunately i can't find a way to view the PCI that doesn't require rooting

[imex99]

Anyway to add share button within app?

[mikejeep]

Anyway to add share button within app?

 

It's on the list of things I'm trying to learn how to do!

 

-Mike

[S4GRU]

Sorry, but I used the app on a phone with no additional app just to check if I was right. Stock LG G2 app and ONLY the Pro version installed. Battery lasted only a few hours vs the full day. After removing the app, battery life returned to normal.

LG battery stats showed the 73% usage.

I have not experienced this issue with roughly a dozen devices running SCP to date.

[Ascertion]

I have not experienced this issue with roughly a dozen devices running SCP to date.

I had this issue before, I posted a screenshot somewhere in this thread. I didn't change anything and the issue went away by itself. Haven't experienced it again. I'm on the G2 as well.

 

Sent from my LG-LS980

[mikejeep]

I had this issue before, I posted a screenshot somewhere in this thread. I didn't change anything and the issue went away by itself. Haven't experienced it again. I'm on the G2 as well.

 

I wonder if it's a G2 battery stats bug; unless SignalCheck gets hung up doing something CPU-intensive (which it doesn't really do anyway), it would be very hard for the app to become a power hog. It just hangs out in the background listening for data updates.

 

On another note, this true black background I'm testing out is growing on me. Maybe it's just me, but it's very noticeable when running the app at night in the car. The LTE band information on the status bar icons is pretty cool too..

 

-Mike

[BlueAngel]

I wonder if it's a G2 battery stats bug; unless SignalCheck gets hung up doing something CPU-intensive (which it doesn't really do anyway), it would be very hard for the app to become a power hog. It just hangs out in the background listening for data updates.

 

On another note, this true black background I'm testing out is growing on me. Maybe it's just me, but it's very noticeable when running the app at night in the car. The LTE band information on the status bar icons is pretty cool too..

 

-Mike

Let's get a preview.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 running Android 5.0 Lollipop

[Dkoellerwx]

 

I learned something new today and thought I would share it. I learned Google sheets allows if statements so if you add a new column and then put the following pointing at the provider column it easily maps the SCP log for you. I had to zoom in to see the pink pins they get covered you may want to change the pin colors.

=if(C2="Sprint","ylw_blank",if(C2="Sprint B26","orange_blank","pink_blank"))

 

I thought this was more widely known. I've been using IF-THEN statements in Google sheets to map SCP logs and all of my market maps for a long time

[mikejeep]

Let's get a preview.

 

Ta-da! Here is a peek:

 

 

Still working on tweaking the resolution; that is an oversized icon that Android is scaling down, which is probably why it looks a little sloppy. I'm making density-specific icons that will hopefully look as sharp as the square screenshot icon in the status bar. Looks like I should be able to do the style above, also a "LTE 800" version, and then similar icons that use a larger font but do not show the signal strength. It's very tedious work so it's taking me a little bit to get them all done, but it will be worth the wait..

 

-Mike