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

[dkyeager]

Some of the phantom sites seen as neighbor cells may also be existing sites where the PCI number has been changed.  We are seeing that in the Ohio major city markets via analyzing SCP logs and the logs of two other applications via a spreadsheet that is loaded with all confirmed sites in Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland (new GCI-PCI-BID). This is being done with the help of many members in all three markets.  Thus this is also occurring on many phones as well.  Of course all three markets are in Samsung territory so it may not apply to other areas.

[mikejeep]

Mike looks like you are getting close to release?  Seems you will be blowing alot of minds!  lol.

 

Haha yes, getting close.. need to finish fixing an issue with log importing, then one last round of beta testing. Hopefully it will be wrapped up Soon™ 

 

-Mike

[mikejeep]

The latest and greatest beta was just released a few minutes ago, and it marks the end of this round of development.. it will be publicly released once I'm satisfied it has been thoroughly tested. I spent all day on it, but I finally got log importing to work -- and it works well. Users will now be able to import, export (backup), and delete the actual log database from within the app; no root access is needed. Viewing and editing will be more complicated to implement, but the sqlite database program of your choice can be used for this in the meantime.

 

The overall changelog for the next update will be huge.. check it out if you want a tease of what's coming: http://www.bluelinepc.com/signalcheck/change-log/

 

There are a lot of things remaining that I want to resolve in the near future (I haven't forgotten about new Alerts and issues with Lollipop, or the way-outdated Lite version), but I think this one should make some people happy!

 

-Mike

[UPdownLoAD]

Whoops, I broke the new beta already!

 

I started SCP, exported DB, then chose import which is when it crashed.

 

Diagnostic logs sent, S5 Sport on 4.4.2 stock unrooted

[mikejeep]

Whoops, I broke the new beta already!

 

Yes you did! Actually, no you didn't, I broke it.. I just didn't realize it until you pointed it out to me. Funny how typing "evdo" where you meant to type "cdma" makes such a big difference. Thanks to your rapid-fire responses to me, another new beta is out..

 

The good news is I didn't totally mess this update up. Already receiving feedback saying that T-Mobile LTE band identification is working, and GCIs are appearing on Samsung devices that didn't previously show them!

 

-Mike

[WiWavelength]

Yes you did! Actually, no you didn't, I broke it..

 

I think that is called the Google Play beta "Tuck Rule."

 

AJ

[tongboy]

Once the beta goes live to everyone well written site note export files will be another currency around here.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[jeffcarp]

Is the Android Wear capability of this app recently added? After some experimenting, I believe that this app is what was responsible for a sudden and massive battery drain on my Moto360. All of a sudden, in the last couple days, my watch went from getting 18 to 24 hours of battery life at an absolute minimum to about half of that. My watch is pretty much factory defaults except of course for the apps that I have on my phone that have Wear capability. I only have a few 3rd party apps with Wear capability and that list has been stagnant since I got the watch. I don't use any third party watch faces.

 

I don't have the latest watch firmware yet that is rolling out this week so I can't use the new feature that shows me specifically what is using the battery life however the only thing that has changed is the addition of this app's Wear capability.

 

The first two hours of this morning I was getting 10 to 12% battery life used per hour. That is what has been happening to me the last few days. At that point I noticed this app's Wear capability. I added this app to the list of apps to stop notifications for from within the Android Wear app on the phone. From that point on my battery life is back to about 3% per hour.

[mikejeep]

Is the Android Wear capability of this app recently added? After some experimenting, I believe that this app is what was responsible for a sudden and massive battery drain on my Moto360. All of a sudden, in the last couple days, my watch went from getting 18 to 24 hours of battery life at an absolute minimum to about half of that.

I have not added any Wear functionality to SignalCheck at all.. I'm not terribly familiar with it, but I believe I have to do something on my end to make it work. I don't think I even have any of the Wear components compiled into the app. When that day comes, you would have to update it from Google Play anyway, and I haven't pushed out a public update since October.

 

Any chance you could hint why you thought it was SignalCheck? Maybe it will work on a watch, I really have no idea..?

 

-Mike

[jefbal99]

A wear watchface that could pull SCP data would be sweet!

[mikejeep]

A wear watchface that could pull SCP data would be sweet!

 

Oh it has been asked for! I have not done any work towards it though, plenty of other things to tackle before I will go off and learn something new like that. I just did some quick research, and it does not appear that SignalCheck could have Wear-abled itself without me taking some explicit steps on my end.

 

-Mike

[jefbal99]

Mike, I'm getting a moto 360 in late January or February, just have it ready by then

[jeffcarp]

I've spent some more time looking at this tonight. SignalCheck Pro is definitely not in the list of Wear applications on the watch in the sense that it has a Wear component in the app that can be run from the watch. However, I think the issue may be related to notifications instead.

 

By default, any app that throws a notification on your phone also shows that notification on the watch. In reviewing what I did this morning, I changed the settings for Android Wear to stop notifications on the watch for the SCP app. I removed that restriction tonight and the battery life problem did return almost immediately.

 

I am totally speculating here because I am not a developer or programmer. Could it be that your app, because of the dynamic information that it is providing in the Android notification bar, is almost constantly triggering a new notification on the watch every time your app updates the signal information on the phone?

 

When I turn off notifications on the watch for your specific app then the battery life problem completely goes away.

 

When I pull down the notification bar on the phone and I can sit and watch the various SCP numbers change dynamically, I wonder if there isn't a trigger of some sort that goes to the watch as a "new notification" every single time those numbers change.

[mikejeep]

I am totally speculating here because I am not a developer or programmer. Could it be that your app, because of the dynamic information that it is providing in the Android notification bar, is almost constantly triggering a new notification on the watch every time your app updates the signal information on the phone?

 

When I turn off notifications on the watch for your specific app then the battery life problem completely goes away.

 

When I pull down the notification bar on the phone and I can sit and watch the various SCP numbers change dynamically, I wonder if there isn't a trigger of some sort that goes to the watch as a "new notification" every single time those numbers change.

 

Aha, that is probably it! Each time there is a change in signal strength detected, the notification is updated (if it didn't, it would be pointless of course). I just did some quick research, and it does look like any notifications that go to the phone are duplicated on a connected watch. I'm sure that this sort of realtime "streaming" notification is not what the watch battery is optimized for.

 

It looks like there might be a way to stop the automatic notifications. I'll look into adding an option within the app so users will have to consciously enable sending to a watch. Maybe I can also adjust it to only update the connection type, not the signal strength; that would significantly reduce the updates.

 

-Mike

[floorguy]

so the neighboring cells thing....ummm is the notes next to it in the beta, or am i missing something in my preferences

[mikejeep]

so the neighboring cells thing....ummm is the notes next to it in the beta, or am i missing something in my preferences

 

Are you seeing neighbor cells at all? If not, go to Preferences > Display Settings > Show Neighbor Cells. That's the only option in the current version. Do you see notes for the current LTE site? Does your phone show you LTE PCI and TAC? They should just show up, as long as you had previously entered a note for the site in the neighbor list. Feel free to post a screenshot with neighbor cells visible.

 

-Mike

[jeffcarp]

There is already a mechanism within the Android Wear app to turn off notifications for specific apps. Of course this stops all notifications for the app since there is no ability within Android Wear to be selective on the notifications within a given app. Perhaps you could just provide some education within your app so people know to add this restriction within Android Wear?

 

[mikejeep]

There is already a mechanism within the Android Wear app to turn off notifications for specific apps. Of course this stops all notifications for the app since there is no ability within Android Wear to be selective on the notifications within a given app. Perhaps you could just provide some education within your app so people know to add this restriction within Android Wear?

 

It's probably easier for me to have them disabled by default (if I can); those who want to see info on their watch would probably go digging through the preferences to see if there was an option for it. If you hadn't thought to look at non-Wear apps like mine, you'd still be wondering why your battery life is terrible. I don't want the app to be a sneaky resource hog like that!

 

I need to learn how to work with a Wear device before doing anything, but if it's possible I'll try to offer multiple options, with some sort of warning about possible battery drain if you use the "regular" notification.

 

-Mike

[floorguy]

Are you seeing neighbor cells at all? If not, go to Preferences > Display Settings > Show Neighbor Cells. That's the only option in the current version. Do you see notes for the current LTE site? Does your phone show you LTE PCI and TAC? They should just show up, as long as you had previously entered a note for the site in the neighbor list. Feel free to post a screenshot with neighbor cells visible.

 

-Mike

here ya go...all those are a yes.....I was just checking to make sure i wasnt missing some cool feature (like names on neighbor cells)

 

 

 

 

 

will it be able to tell what band the neighbor cells are???  like in the above photo....they are both from the same tower, and i have notes for most of these listed in here

[mikejeep]

here ya go...all those are a yes.....I was just checking to make sure i wasnt missing some cool feature (like names on neighbor cells)

 

will it be able to tell what band the neighbor cells are??? like in the above photo....they are both from the same tower, and i have notes for most of these listed in here

That is weird.. if you have notes entered for those other sites, I think you should be seeing them. The only reason you might not is if all of those other sites are on a different TAC. Have you ever seen notes on neighbor cells? Maybe I'm crazy and this wasn't implemented at the time of the last public update??

 

The next update has a lot of changes and might resolve your issue. It should be ready by early next week.

 

The PCI is the only value reported, so the app can't nail down what band you are looking at.

 

-Mike

[floorguy]

That is weird.. if you have notes entered for those other sites, I think you should be seeing them. The only reason you might not is if all of those other sites are on a different TAC. Have you ever seen notes on neighbor cells? Maybe I'm crazy and this wasn't implemented at the time of the last public update??

 

The next update has a lot of changes and might resolve your issue. It should be ready by early next week.

 

-Mike

nope never saw them, even before i screwed up and lost my notes

[PDXmike]

Mike, to add to the Moto 360/Android Wear discussion, here are images of what a Signal Check Pro notification looks like on the Moto 360. I receive two notifications, both appear the same on the watch. They usually pop up on the watch every couple of days and I simply clear them out.

 

Small notification:

 

Expanded notification:

 

I haven't noticed any severe battery drain without the SCP notifications being disabled. I charge the watch at night and have no problem getting a full day of use out of the watch. Just my observation, others' mileage may vary.

 

Also, I am loving the new beta. Keep up the good work!

[swintec]

I also do not see neighbor notes on my nexus 5.  i always thought it was something i did wrong or that i had to manually add the notes to the neighbor section.

[mdob07]

Neighbor notes showing fine on my Nexus 5. Stock rooted with latest beta.

 

[floorguy]

I also do not see neighbor notes on my nexus 5.  i always thought it was something i did wrong or that i had to manually add the notes to the neighbor section.

whats funny is, I just looked again at it tonight....

 

and it was there

 

[url=http://s72.photobucket.com/user/floorguy/media/Mobile%20Uploads/Screenshot_2014-12-19-18-08-04.png.html]

 

 

very weird