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

[nowerlater]

Here is the proof. So just Mike making sure he has all bases covered.

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[nexgencpu]

8 minutes ago, nowerlater said:

Here is the proof. So just Mike making sure he has all bases covered.

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Don't want to side track convo, just curious to know what kind of speeds your seeing from that site considering its broadcasting 2xCA with what looks like relay backhaul (probably upgraded to wired backhaul)

[nowerlater]

Don't want to side track convo, just curious to know what kind of speeds your seeing from that site considering its broadcasting 2xCA with what looks like relay backhaul (probably upgraded to wired backhaul)

Its was mid 50's if I recall correctly

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[jthawks]

Oh ok.  The actual mini mac is like 75 yrds away. 

[mikejeep]

Saw this come up but not seeing a small cell near by

It's indicating you are connected to a second carrier on either a small cell or a Mini Macro. Both have similar GCI patterns; the app can't distinguish between them, that's why it displays both.

-Mike

[dkyeager]

4 hours ago, nowerlater said:

Its basically a mini mac. We do have a small cell in the Cincinnati market that is broadcasting 2 signals with different pci and gci. Mike did that just incase its discovered somewhere else also.

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This confusion could be eliminatedby adding:  If PCI 450 or greater then SC#2 else MM#2.

The upper limit is MagicBoxes starting at PCI 488 (which matches our market sheets) as mentioned here:

Hopefully 5G has more PCIs available.

[Trip]

In my region, I've noticed that newly-activated 8T8Rs initially have PCI values of 501-503 for a few days before being reassigned their permanent values.  So just seeing PCI 501-503 doesn't mean you're looking at a Magic Box.

- Trip

[dkyeager]

15 hours ago, Trip said:

In my region, I've noticed that newly-activated 8T8Rs initially have PCI values of 501-503 for a few days before being reassigned their permanent values.  So just seeing PCI 501-503 doesn't mean you're looking at a Magic Box.

- Trip

MagicBoxes are a different animal than Air Harmony Small Cells.

[Trip]

Mike,

Do you happen to know why some US Cellular logs have the provider as "US Cellular" while others have "U.S. Cellular"? 

- Trip

[mikejeep]

Do you happen to know why some US Cellular logs have the provider as "US Cellular" while others have "U.S. Cellular"?

No, that's odd! In most instances, the app overrides the provider name that is being broadcast (because many SCP users want to know the true identity of the network they are on, i.e. Project Fi). SCP uses "US".. perhaps the network uses periods in the name and for some reason it's falling back to that. Where in the app are you seeing "U.S."?

-Mike

[Trip]

30 minutes ago, mikejeep said:

No, that's odd! In most instances, the app overrides the provider name that is being broadcast (because many SCP users want to know the true identity of the network they are on, i.e. Project Fi). SCP uses "US".. perhaps the network uses periods in the name and for some reason it's falling back to that. Where in the app are you seeing "U.S."?

-Mike

In my log database.  It's usually US, but sometimes I'll see U.S. instead.  Sometimes even for different sectors on the same site. 

(Unrelatedly, I'd love it if it were possible to prevent the log from updating when the TAC is 0 but is normally populated.  I've found that the PCI values entered into the database are incorrect when the TAC is missing, and of course the TAC being 0 ends up in the database as well.)

- Trip

[Trip]

34 minutes ago, mikejeep said:

No, that's odd! In most instances, the app overrides the provider name that is being broadcast (because many SCP users want to know the true identity of the network they are on, i.e. Project Fi). SCP uses "US".. perhaps the network uses periods in the name and for some reason it's falling back to that. Where in the app are you seeing "U.S."?

-Mike

 

Mike,

Here's a picture showing it in the database editing software.  I've circled it in red.  https://imgur.com/a/MeTsS8k

Also, circled in orange, note the Sprint B5 for a US Cellular site.  I see that in the app fairly regularly, along with nTelos B5.  Not sure what's up with that, either.

- Trip

[mikejeep]

16 hours ago, Trip said:

In my log database.  It's usually US, but sometimes I'll see U.S. instead.  Sometimes even for different sectors on the same site. 

(Unrelatedly, I'd love it if it were possible to prevent the log from updating when the TAC is 0 but is normally populated.  I've found that the PCI values entered into the database are incorrect when the TAC is missing, and of course the TAC being 0 ends up in the database as well.)

That is odd. I'll have to do some digging and testing to see where that is coming from. Regarding TAC 0, I have it flagged to log if TAC is between 0 and 65535. I can have it ignore TAC 0 if that's truly invalid, but I assumed that about PCI when I wrote the app, which turned out to be wrong (PCI 0 is valid and in use). If TAC 0 is legitimate I could look into making it a user option.

 

16 hours ago, Trip said:

Also, circled in orange, note the Sprint B5 for a US Cellular site.  I see that in the app fairly regularly, along with nTelos B5.  Not sure what's up with that, either.

That's the long-standing issue where the PLMN doesn't update in sync with the other data. It's very annoying. I *may* have overcome that in the current beta, albeit accidentally.. it's taking awhile to iron out some other bugs that have popped up but I'm still plugging away at it.

-Mike

[Trip]

2 hours ago, mikejeep said:

That is odd. I'll have to do some digging and testing to see where that is coming from. Regarding TAC 0, I have it flagged to log if TAC is between 0 and 65535. I can have it ignore TAC 0 if that's truly invalid, but I assumed that about PCI when I wrote the app, which turned out to be wrong (PCI 0 is valid and in use). If TAC 0 is legitimate I could look into making it a user option.

 

That's the long-standing issue where the PLMN doesn't update in sync with the other data. It's very annoying. I *may* have overcome that in the current beta, albeit accidentally.. it's taking awhile to iron out some other bugs that have popped up but I'm still plugging away at it.

-Mike

My assumption is that 0 could be valid, but in my specific circumstances, it never actually is.  Making it a switchable option would be enormously helpful for me; sometimes when changing sites, my Motorola phones seem to lose the TAC while keeping the previous GCI and showing whatever PCI it's connecting to, whereas my LG Sprint phone loses the GCI in those cases, preventing the bad data from being logged.  It's rather unhelpful.

I look forward to the next beta!

- Trip

[RyanThaDude]

Just FYI it seems Verizon is changing their cells. Band IDs are now assigned to B2 (OC, 16, 20) instead of B4 AWS. No change to B13. No signs of B4, B5, or any others as of yet.

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[mikejeep]

On 1/30/2019 at 6:20 AM, Trip said:

My assumption is that 0 could be valid, but in my specific circumstances, it never actually is.  Making it a switchable option would be enormously helpful for me; sometimes when changing sites, my Motorola phones seem to lose the TAC while keeping the previous GCI and showing whatever PCI it's connecting to, whereas my LG Sprint phone loses the GCI in those cases, preventing the bad data from being logged.  It's rather unhelpful.

I've been researching this, and I am fairly confident that TAC 0 is unlikely to be seen in the wild, if it's even valid at all. Looking into it further, I was actually inconsistent within SignalCheck; the logger would save TAC 0, but most of the rest of the app recognized it as invalid. But, correcting that just means the TAC field in that log entry would be blank, it's not a mandatory value. So I am still going to add a "don't log without a valid TAC" option that should suit your needs.

-Mike

[Trip]

So, this is interesting.

https://imgur.com/a/D9y82Ru

It looks like Sprint has stopped using 311870 for Clear sites, and is now using 310120 as the PLMN for them.  This means, as you can see in the Crystal City South image, that it's now showing as "Sprint B41 SC" even though it's a Clear site.  I don't know why Goat Hill, for instance, did not show up that way.

- Trip

[stlman314]

4 hours ago, Trip said:

So, this is interesting.

https://imgur.com/a/D9y82Ru

It looks like Sprint has stopped using 311870 for Clear sites, and is now using 310120 as the PLMN for them.  This means, as you can see in the Crystal City South image, that it's now showing as "Sprint B41 SC" even though it's a Clear site.  I don't know why Goat Hill, for instance, did not show up that way.

- Trip

All the ones in the MO Market are the same way now. Been like that for over a month here. 

[mikejeep]

6 hours ago, Trip said:

It looks like Sprint has stopped using 311870 for Clear sites, and is now using 310120 as the PLMN for them.  This means, as you can see in the Crystal City South image, that it's now showing as "Sprint B41 SC" even though it's a Clear site.  I don't know why Goat Hill, for instance, did not show up that way.

Interesting indeed.. I haven't seen anything like that in the Boston market, at least not yet. Not sure how I am going to be able to tackle that wrinkle in the app.. hmm.

-Mike

[Dkoellerwx]

10 hours ago, mikejeep said:

Interesting indeed.. I haven't seen anything like that in the Boston market, at least not yet. Not sure how I am going to be able to tackle that wrinkle in the app.. hmm.

-Mike

KS/MO market clear sites have also been updated to the standard market codes. However they're still using the normal Clear endings for 2nd/3rd carriers so it's confusing SCP into thinking they're MMs or SCs.

[RyanThaDude]

Just a heads up, I updated to the Q Beta on my Pixel 2 XL and it broke SCP. It no longer shows the connected cell. 

[danlodish345]

Just a heads up, I updated to the Q Beta on my Pixel 2 XL and it broke SCP. It no longer shows the connected cell. 

What's q beta?

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[RyanThaDude]

Just now, danlodish345 said:

What's q beta?

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Android Q, the beta of the newest Android OS. It was released today for Pixel devices. https://www.google.com/android/beta

[UPdownLoAD]

What's q beta?

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Pretty sure that's the guy from Star Trek TNG

[danlodish345]

Android Q, the beta of the newest Android OS. It was released today for Pixel devices. https://www.google.com/android/beta

oh okay I get what you're saying now. Thanks for the clarification. How does it look so far because I have the new S10 and I'm curious as to what it looks like.

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