Is Tasker every going to be able to report LTE signal strength?

[Dave Handler]

Hi!

I've seen numerous posts from people reporting in that the cell signal which I believe is %CELLSIG is not being reported correctly when on LTE.  And this is not just CDMA phone but GSM as well.

Granted I could downshift my phone into 3g but why would I want to do that after waiting so long to get LTE?!

This is not listed in the bug limitations nor is it a fix in the next version of Tasker.

It would be really great to have this functioning again!   Shell scripting out to get the signalstrength is NOT every efficient and battery intensive!

I hope there is a conclusion for this!

Regards,

Dave

[Pent]

I've seen numerous posts from people reporting in that the cell signal which I believe is %CELLSIG is not being reported correctly when on LTE.  And this is not just CDMA phone but GSM as well.

Are you trying with Menu / Prefs / Monitor / Use New Cell API or without ? Or both ?

LTE is not supported by the old API (at least for cells, don't know about sig strength), but the new API has various flaws on various devices/ROMs.

Pent

[Pent]

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=60430, last few posts are informative.

Notice that the bug report was opened 20 months ago.

Pent

[Dave Handler]

Hi! 

Yes I've seen how old it is.  I've only had an LTE device since Dec '13 and have only really seriously gotten into what Tasker can do in the past couple of months.

I did turn on the 'Use New Cell API' and backed out of Tasker and then created a task to just flash %CELLID an %CELLSIG.  %CELLID had no value since it only flashed %CELLID and %CELLSIG showed me a -1.

I would imagine that since I'm on a Nexus 5 KK 4.4.2 that I would have API-17 support.

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[Pent]

I would imagine that since I'm on a Nexus 5 KK 4.4.2 that I would have API-17 support.

Of course it has, doesn't mean that API 17 functions are working properly however, as the link I gave shows.

Pent

[Dave Handler]

Well, doesn't this suck.  Guess it's going to have to be a waiting game.

--

[Mark Devine]

Sorry to bump this old thread.

I'm also having these problems with cellsig not dynamically reporting signal on lte (running on Google play edition rooted htc one).

Is this a known bug, is there a workaround for getting signal strength, and is it likely to get fixed any time soon?

[Robert Ryan]

There is a workaround, which I posted here: http://goo.gl/ilxbLi

Works for my phone: Droid Turbo Kitkat 4.4.4
YMMV

[Mark Devine]

That's great,  thanks. How do I import that? I've tried as a tsk.xml and as a prf.xml but no joy...

Seems annoying that it has to be a battery-intensive looped task to monitor signal strength. I hope this will be fixed as there are a very large number of potential use-cases here...

[Marta Hintz]

It's the Description (recipe) you put it in manually   ;-)

[Robert Ryan]

I attached the XML file.

I searched for an efficient way to keep this updated, but the best I could come up with a repeating time context set at 2 minutes.

[Mark Devine]

Cheers for the task!
I can't get it to work unfortunately,  it just flashes the name of the variable rather than any content (ie. "%dbm(1)"  flashes up)

Mark

[Robert Ryan]

That's odd, I am using it right now to display cell strength in a widget.

Add a Set Clipboard action after the second action of the task. Set the clipboard to %cell_list(). Then paste the result here.

What network are you using?

Did you import the XML or type the task in manually?

[Mark Devine]

Clipboard :
%cell_list

[Robert Ryan]

You need to set the clipboard to %cell_list(). The parentheses have to be included.

What about the other questions?

[Mark Devine]

Ah, thanks!

CellInfoWcdma:{mRegistered=YES mTimeStampType=oem_ril mTimeStamp=118521798243836ns CellIdentityWcdma:{ mMcc=234 mMnc=20 mLac=104 mCid=10451524 mPsc=415} CellSignalStrengthWcdma: ss=3 ber=99},CellInfoWcdma:{mRegistered=NO mTimeStampType=oem_ril mTimeStamp=118521798243836ns CellIdentityWcdma:{ mMcc=2147483647 mMnc=2147483647 mLac=2147483647 mCid=2147483647 mPsc=470} CellSignalStrengthWcdma: ss=0 ber=99}

Network is 3(uk), lte mostly.
I imported the task rather than typing it in.  It appears to have parsed correctly...

Mark

On 24 Mar 2015 12:35, "Robert Ryan" <rbr...@gmail.com> wrote:

You need to set the clipboard to %cell_list(). The parentheses have to be included.

What about the other questions?

[Robert Ryan]

Ok, I see the problem. Your cell towers are reporting as WCDMA instead of LTE. To get the signal strength for WCDMA, change the search string to (?<=ss=)\d+

This will get the strength in ASU units. To get the strength in dBm, apply the formula:

dBm = 2 × ASU - 113

See http://goo.gl/ZQJc8M for reference.

[Vick Lee]

Since you have to use a context that checks every 2 minutes, how bad is the battery drain?

[Robert Ryan]

On April 24, 2015 9:50:50 AM Vick Lee <confu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Since you have to use a context that checks every 2 minutes, how bad is the
> battery drain?

"Efficient" was probably a poor choice of words. What I meant was that I couldn't find any way to keep cell signal strength updated except with a repeating time loop. Two minutes seems a long time between updates.

This is in contrast to wifi signal strength which can be updated, via an intent, as soon as it changes.

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[Mark Devine]

I abandoned it,  as battery drain was worse than just allowing the phone to hunt for a signal in a no-signal workplace.

[Vick Lee]

How did you implement your profile? I walk around buildings a lot during the day and get a variety of good/bad/no signal. 

I was thinking of having tasker check every 20 minute for signal. If it is low then enable airplane mode & battery saver mode introduced in lollipop update. If it is good then re-enable all.

[Mark Devine]

I ran it every 2 mins. If there was consistently bad signal (a signal strength derived from this thread of less than 15) for 10 mins a profile was activated that enables airplane mode-without wifi changes. Every 10 mins it checked a spot signal strength,  with a reset - to-baseline if the signal had normalised,  and a continuance in 10 mins checking if not.

[Vick Lee]

Just curious why Signal_Strength.tsk.xml used TelephoneManger.getAllCellInfo() then parsed text signal? Instead couldn't CellSignalStrength.getDbm() be used?

On Monday, March 23, 2015 at 4:13:17 PM UTC-7, Robert Ryan wrote:

[Robert Ryan]

On April 26, 2015 11:51:34 PM Vick Lee <confu...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Just curious why Signal_Strength.tsk.xml used
> TelephoneManger.getAllCellInfo() then parsed text signal? Instead couldn't
> CellSignalStrength.getDbm() be used?

That's what I originally thought, but that method always returns -1 for LTE signals. Some explanation for this can be found here:  http://goo.gl/oXfXqA

[Dave Handler]

Strange. Tasker won't give me signal strength even on 3g.

Getting the LTE signal strength works! Now I'm after the 3G and maybe 1x as well. Sprint is the quickest to say newest and faster network but is lousy at upgrading towers.

I dumped the telephony register when I had the device in 3G.


root@hammerhead:/ # dumpsys telephony.registry
last known state:
Phone Id=0
mCallState=0
mCallIncomingNumber=
mServiceState=0 0 voice home data home Sprint 31000 Sprint 31000 1xRTT eHRPD CSS not supported 214 4135 RoamInd=1 DefRoamInd=0 EmergOnly=false
mSignalStrength=SignalStrength: 99 0 -75 -110 -68 -10 8 99 2147483647 2147483647 2147483647 2147483647 cdma
mMessageWaiting=false
mCallForwarding=false
mDataActivity=0
mDataConnectionState=2
mDataConnectionPossible=true
mDataConnectionReason=connected
mDataConnectionApn=

Appreciate the help!

BTW the way I use this in a Zooper widget is in the profile net type 4g AND screen on. I then just keep loosing the task. I've found 3 seconds of wait is good 15 if you really want to prolong it.

Again thanks!

[Mark Devine]

Does anyone know if this is ever going to get fixed?

[Mark Devine]

The new update has broken the script posted above for me- is it working for anyone else? Cell_list is now empty and the task throws up errors...

On 1 Jun 2015 10:12 am, "Mark Devine" <markde...@gmail.com> wrote:

Does anyone know if this is ever going to get fixed?

[Scott S]

Same for me.