Notices

Not entirely my experience. Sometimes it is a location about 7km away, sometimes about 2km away. A few weeks ago it pointed exactly to a large building I was visiting. Used cellid's do change every now and then, even if you are not on the move.

If you really think your cell tower coordinates are incorrect, you could report it at http://www.opencellid.org. Providers keep there celltower locations secret, the information is purely bases on community input.

Yep. Sorry for being unclear on this point.
I first tried with 1-6, then reimstalled 1-5 and then of course tested 1-7.
@pichlo Yes, a lot of those hotspots work like that. And that is where you may see this behaviour (also/first had it behind a hotel hotspot WITH credentials typed, but China).

@ade Sorry, didnt have time to test more, had to catch my train.

--edit
Checked one more time with 1-7 and it indeed returns. But only after more than 30 seconds. That long time no response at all.

I was wondering, if this:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...0&postcount=30

...could be (ab)used to get information about band we're using and show it in cellnet?
---

Also, "kinda" request - currently, "signal strength" is funny, I get 100% all the time, despite ~10 dbm differencies. Would it be more sane to calculate it basing on CSQ (which is based on SNR), where CSQ 32 = 100% signal (impossible in real-life), and CSQ 0 = 0% (no signal)? It would give some meaningful results, as current signal strength % is quite useless.

Also, just a dumb question - shouldn't it be -n dBm, instead of n dBm? Aren't RSSI ratios presented as negative values (higher = closer to 0 = better)?

/Estel

Although it refers to Phone.Net, I have no idea how to actually query that info. If someone can, I am more than happy to apply it.

I do not agree on the useless part. It's equal to the bar value in the status bar as far as I can tell. You must be blessed with a very good reception, as my signal strength varies between 100% and no signal at all from time to time. I doubt if "at+csq" results in a significant other pattern, but I will do some more measurements on that.

I guess you are right about that, I will fix that in a next release. And I will try to add a little more cellular info.

In terminal, try for other functions of "Phone.Net" object and what the return object means you can check http://www.cncmods.net/files/dbus/net_interface.xml . There are dbus bindings for various programming languages so you shouldn't have problems getting the same results programmaticaly

Edit: oh, wait, did you mean "I have no idea" or really "I have now idea"? I missed the "w" in "now" somehow, excuse me...

Sorry, I meant "no idea".

I know this command, but it does not contain the used gsm band

So I got you correct despite the typo You are right, I don't see it either in any return object of any method listed there... I also tried readelf'ing /usr/lib/csd/plugins/libcsd-net.so, but no symbol with word "band" in it, nor in linked libraries detected by ldd... Will try to search deeper (something like leaving "find / -iname *.so -exec readelf -Ws {} \; | grep band" for the night - but the command may be wrong or have typos as I just semi-randomly typed it now).

edit: in fact, might be better to list all shared objects in the system, and then "readelf" them like there is no tomorrow in search of "band" string.

First of all, thanks a lot for your super-fast and detailed reply. As usual, an "ade's mark" of support quality should be stamped on your releases and visible from application manager

I indeed have very good reception here, but, apart from that, I think that "It's equal to the bar value in the status bar" is the core of problem. The thing is, that corporate software creators (be it for phone software, or cellular modem "partner software"), tend to assign completely non-standarized, authoritary and (sometimes) random values to what "100% signal strength" means.

That's why, for cellular-network tech oriented communities, those things are considered useless, and they reffer to -dBm *and* it's equivalent CSQ values, exclusively. While CSQ is not ideal (different modem manufacturers assign different things to CSQ=0, aka "no signal"), it is still more real-life useful, because CSQ=32 always mean *true* 100% signal strength (aka unreachable in real life), so any other CSQ - often calculated into %, by community software (as opposed to "vanilla" connection managers), gives some real insight on how close to that theoretical "ideal" our signal is.

Also, for our use case, having signal-bar from status menu cloned into % for cellnet-info, is (IMHO) less useful, than having "from zero to theoretical maximum", more precise measurement. Sure, dBm value next to % provides it, but why not have it calculated as % for "on first glance" experience, instead of doing math in our head every time

BTW, if at+csq would give same results, it would mean that they really, *REALLY* screwed it. In no way anyone could ever get CSQ=32 (100%), and even CSQ=31 is rarely seen. Meanwhile, we're getting so-called 100% signal strength, as no rarity.

Cheers,
/Estel

// Edit
I really appreciate efforts to get band readings, attempted by more knowledgeable ones. I feel it little irritating, that ages-old nokia phones have super-precise readings from their hidden netmon program (do not confuse with N900's netmon in repos, which is just using the same name), including even *channel* (equal value to few MHZ that we're transmitting at), and we're struggling to get band :|

But, maybe that's one of limitations we must accept - then, even band response from modem would be nice to have.

Changelog 0.0.1-8:
Remarks/questions:

• My operator does not supply network time AFAIK, so can anyone who does receive this, check if a (valid) time is displayed using "Provider info"?
• My primary device has 112/911/999 as emergency numbers, while my backup device shows 112/911/118/119/000/110/999/08. Can't relate it to regional or device settings. Any clue why they differ? Only difference is that my backup device has no SIM card, perhaps that's the cause.
• opencellid.org is giving me issues retrieving cellinfo (failed to lookup cellid). Most likely opencellid.org related. This version should deal with that without errors, and you can always disable the internet lookup. So far, I have not heard they have changed their API.

@Estel:
These are some numbers I consequently measure in my area:
So it does not give me real other insights in terms of signal strength fluctuations. Perhaps your CSQ values are a bit higher. As the collection of this info may also be harder inside cellnet-info, I won't include if for now, sorry.

My provider does supply network time, so I'll test it and report back as soon as autobuilder chew new version of cellnet-info (no update available here, yet).

No problem, I was suggesting, only Just keep in mind that current values are really misleading, and your tests confirmed it - stating CSQ 17 as 100% signal is laughable, to say at least (of course it's not your fault, bullet at Nokia[?]).

In case you would like to fix it *without* query'ing CSQ from modem (which gives a little strange replies, anyway), I've prepared a simple algo to calculate CSQ from dBm (which you have access to, already). It is cellular variant, the most commonly used one (at least in cellular network communities):

Then, remaining thing to get % values is to assign percents to corresponding values (CSQ 32 = 100%, CSQ 16 = 50%, CSQ 0 = 0%, etc) and in-between things.

Thinking about that, you may skip calculating CSQ entirely - just check lowest and highest dBm values from algo above, and assign percents, from best to worst.

/Estel