Blackberry Fieldtest

[spleck]

Anyone used the field test program for Blackberry? Supposedly it will auto scan and log towers including their GPS location, then let you map them on BB Maps or Google Maps.

If its good enough, I might consider getting a BB just to play with.

[RadioFoneGuy]

There is alot to it but its a pain to get it enabled and its only on for 30 days at a time.

Depending on your blackberry the letters and numbers are kinda small.

There is a sim card viewer built in which is cool as you can see all the roaming capabilties.

[spleck]

Actually, I guess its called SignalLoc. This is different from the BB built-in fieldtest.

Software Download
Blackberry Forums Info

[21RCA]

I'm not using it but I will download and try it out. Looks like a useful tool. Give me a few days with this and I'll report back.

[21RCA]

I have been using this for a couple days now and I got to say it's pretty cool. It does show you where the cell site is and approximately how far away it is from your location. As your driving, the distance will increase or decrease in feet and miles as you drive to or away from the site. This software works great with the built in Blackberry maps App. You can have the software auto track and save as you drive around and then later export it to a file and view it with I'm assuming Google maps. Haven't tried this yet.

I'm with T-Mobile and i have noticed that not all of their sites give off the location info so your mileage may vary there. It also shows other info like what network your connected to (T-Mobile/att), how fast your driving, your heading altitude etc.

I’ll try and post some screen shots this weekend after i fiddle with this some more.

[spleck]

Thanks for the report! I'll have to look for a deal on a Blackberry so I can play around with this. I think I can get an old 8700, but the program would probably work better with a built-in GPS, so I'll have to check around.

[21RCA]

I don't see why the GPS puck would give you any trouble but in the link you posted to the BlackberryForums topic, someone commented on using a puck. I don't remember where in that thread I read it, it's a bit long.

Hopefully I don't butcher this post up by trying to show some screen shots, here goes.

This first pic is a typical screen shot of your location and the tower location. Notice at the bottom it shows approximately how far the tower is from your current location. It constantly updates as you drive closer or further away. At that point in time, you could pull up your menu and export it to Blackberry Maps to see its location. Talk about Cell Tower hunting made easy.


After driving around and having this software Auto Save the cell sites (you can turn off auto save), you can view them all on Blackberry Maps. Not complicated, very easy to use.


Or you can export the sites to a .kml file and upload it to Google Maps.
Thursday - Google Maps

The first day I used this I was in a rural part of North East San Diego County and not all the sites had the location info, maybe due to they are still shared with att, I don't know. But in the cities it was hitting every site. Really a neat and useful app.

[spleck]

That looks awesome. I'll talk my sister into giving up her BB8700g and see how it works on there. Sadly, I'm inclined to grab a 8320 from newegg for $350 or so... definitely tower hunting made easy.

My understanding on the tower locations is that its using Google's database for GSM tower locations, while CDMA towers will report their own location directly.

[spleck]

Originally Posted by 21RCA Or you can export the sites to a .kml file and upload it to Google Maps. Thursday - Google Maps

Wow, I didn't see a single tower at any of those sites using sat/street view. Is your area full of small stealth, or non-descript cell sites? I'm fairly sure all we have are full towers here with fairly large coverage areas. I would be shocked to find that many hidden sites.

[21RCA]

Our area is full of stealth and hidden sites but your right, these locations are a little off. Take for instance the site marked "T-Mobile-142-1-52072-50', the one on Melrose. If you were to go North a few blocks, just as you pass the intersection of Melrose and North Ave, look at the first street light to the right, that's a T-Mobile site.

I guess I need to play around with the settings a bit. Thanks for pointing that out spleck.

[Jonathan Kramer]

SigLoc will work on VZW BB Curves, but because VZW cripples the GPS for all but their own apps, SIGLOC is less useful (no distance, location, etc.). Still worth it IMHO.

Jonathan

[n7ryy]

I have been testing out SignalLoc with my unlocked 8900 on AT&T in the Portland/Vancouver area lately. Unfortunately it does dot show tower site coordinates either. It does log MCC/MNC/LAC/Cell ID. It will show the channel # as well on the sector you are currently on, however it will not save it. The only option I have is to show current loc on map, which uses the internal GPS and Google Maps to show my position. along with the current Cell ID info. Apparently AT&T does not send the tower coordinates out over the air like T-Mobile and the CDMA carriers do?

21RCA it looks like some of the different sectors of the same T-Mobile sites are at different locations? Are you sure your software is not just logging your lat/long, instead of the cell sites?

[21RCA]

Are you sure your software is not just logging your lat/long, instead of the cell sites?

I think it does log my current location as well as the cell sites. Don't know if it's this way by design or if it's my settings. When I'm not tracking and saving cell sites, but just looking at one tower at a time, it seems to pin point them fairly well.

[n7ryy]

Not sure what's going on? But if you look at cell ID's 53721, 53722, and 53733 it plots them in three different locations. I would think the cell site is geographically located somewhere in the center of those three locations? If T-Mobile is anything like AT&T the last digit indicates the sector and frequency band, while all the other previous digits are a unique cell ID. Like the local one I usually lock into at home is layed out in the following config.
841 North sector PCS band
842 SE sector PCS band
843 SW sector PCS band
844 North sector 850 band
845 SE sector 850 band
846 SW sector 850 band

Almost all AT&T sites in NW Oregon/SW Washington are laid out that way except for omni sites and about a dozen sites around the coast which have totally different cell ID's between the 850 sectors and the PCS sectors.

Anyway that my 2 cents They may do things completely different down there.

[spleck]

I think n7ryy may be on to something. Perhaps there is a bug in the logging portion of the software?

[LineNoise]

I have been using SignalLoc for months now. It's very handy.


The way it works is this. CDMA sends the coordinates of the tower out in it's signal so you can get right then and there.

GSM does not, so the program sends the tower info to google, and then gives you the coordinates.


What I want to do is create a site that everyone can upload their logs too and have a collection of all the sites. I wouldn't even know where to begin with that though.

[n7ryy]

Line Noise which BB and service are you using? I would like to see a SignalLoc screenshot of a Verizon or other CDMA, I have been playing around today with an old non-activated Nokia 3589i today using the field test mode. I am looking forward to having a better field test with auto logging rather than trying to drive, read the tiny screen, and write the PN down. On top of that trying to add and subtract 168 in my head to see if I am hitting different cell sites or different sectors. Fun stuff

I miss the old Cell Track on my Nokia 6682.

[LineNoise]

Curve 8330 on Sprint

I have a friend with Verizon that has used it on his Storm and he said it worked fine aside from the GPS of the handset like previously mentioned.

[hvlcd]

Originally Posted by spleck Wow, I didn't see a single tower at any of those sites using sat/street view. Is your area full of small stealth, or non-descript cell sites? I'm fairly sure all we have are full towers here with fairly large coverage areas. I would be shocked to find that many hidden sites.

The cell tower locations, mapped on my Blackberry to Google Maps from the sigloc application, correspond to the "my location" in Google Maps before my GPS supplies a better location.

From visual perusal, I would guess that it is the average position that was reported for all participants connecting to that tower, with no attempt to actually locate the tower.

In an urban area, those two are probably equal, as cell phones (and maybe the streetview car) would have an opportunity to hit a lot of points for a particular tower.

Out here in the sticks, it's not so good. It's weighted toward roads, and in a local housing area, appears to be in the center of a lake, which I think could easily be the average of the cellular phone user reports, but not the location ofthe tower.

Edge-30000-30-32641-48
38.810658°
-122.565647°

should probably be
12199MID (found in an FCC database)
38.851100°
-122.593600°



I can view the kml in Google Earth, but how does one export to Google Maps?

--
Clarence

[spleck]

Originally Posted by hvlcd The cell tower locations, mapped on my Blackberry to Google Maps from the sigloc application, correspond to the "my location" in Google Maps before my GPS supplies a better location. From visual perusal, I would guess that it is the average position that was reported for all participants connecting to that tower, with no attempt to actually locate the tower.

My understanding was that Google's GSM cell lookup was very accurate--perhaps SignalLoc is not able to query the database properly and is either getting errors or simply using the phone's rough location?

Edge-30000-30-32641-48 38.810658° -122.565647° should probably be 12199MID (found in an FCC database) 38.851100° -122.593600°

Wow, that's really off.

I can view the kml in Google Earth, but how does one export to Google Maps?

I believe there are other ways where you can actually save them to "My Maps", but to quickly view it, you can just do a google maps search on the URL for the KML file (which means you need to host it online somewhere).

[hvlcd]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9000/4.6.0.167 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Originally Posted by spleck Originally Posted by hvlcd The cell tower locations, mapped on my Blackberry to Google Maps from the sigloc application, correspond to the "my location" in Google Maps before my GPS supplies a better location. From visual perusal, I would guess that it is the average position that was reported for all participants connecting to that tower, with no attempt to actually locate the tower. My understanding was that Google's GSM cell lookup was very accurate--perhaps SignalLoc is not able to query the database properly and is either getting errors or simply using the phone's rough location? Edge-30000-30-32641-48 38.810658° -122.565647° should probably be 12199MID (found in an FCC database) 38.851100° -122.593600° Wow, that's really off. I can view the kml in Google Earth, but how does one export to Google Maps? I believe there are other ways where you can actually save them to "My Maps", but to quickly view it, you can just do a google maps search on the URL for the KML file (which means you need to host it online somewhere).

The tower location offered by sigloc is identical to My Location offered by Google Maps before my Bold GPS locks in. It would seem that sigloc is retreiving a "my location" fo a user receiving one tower signal, not the location of the tower.

[hvlcd]

Originally Posted by spleck I believe there are other ways where you can actually save them to "My Maps", but to quickly view it, you can just do a google maps search on the URL for the KML file (which means you need to host it online somewhere).

I found the "My Maps" in maps.google.com
And Google Earth has the "open file".
Sigloc cell towers around Middletown - Google Maps

Google Earth Doesn't' display any icons for the points, which confuses me. I can select a point in the list on the left and see it's properties, but I don't get to see all the dots on the map, like I do in Google Maps, but Google Maps doesn't display all of the data in the properties of each point.

I can transfer the files to a PC using a USB cable and Mass Storage Mode.
If I could save them with a bogus extension of .mp3, instead of mylocations.kml, I think I could send them from the Media application via Bluetooth.

--
Clarence

[spleck]

I finally used a Sprint Blackberry 8703 to log some sites. It worked really well and I've verified sites at almost every one I've checked. The GPS coords were all within meters of the site. To note though, I was using an inactive Sprint phone that does not have GPS built in. It relied solely on the site reporting its coordinates and the phone did not have an internet connection to get data.

GoogleMap of SignalLoc KML

Even though the files are .kml, I was able to use the Media application to send the files over Bluetooth.

[21RCA]

Glad it's working out for you.

[spleck]

Originally Posted by 21RCA Glad it's working out for you.

Yeah, relying on the cell tower reporting the location is working well since its CDMA. I can't get into the programming menu though to search for VZW, Cricket, etc. I'd like to unlock it and also get a GSM BB. It's nice to just leave the phone in the car and have it automatically log the sites!

[MarkMckinley]

Welcome to the forum !!! Though I'm not using the Blackberry.But I guess ,at least you changed to manual mode from networks settings with GPS location. If your BB by any change sees another network it should show you.Thanks.....

[n7ryy]

I picked up a Verizon CDMA 8130 from a friend and loaded up the SignalLoc application. I have been running the application and notice some different data on it versus the old Nokia 3589i I have. The Nokia would display the PN's as I drive around to help identify the different sectors of a cell site. As I drive around with the BB the only thing that seems to change is the Cell BID and and the Channel Nu. But they do not seem to correspond to the PN's at all, This phone is not currently activated yet, but I don't think this would matter? I can post screen shots if needed. Any ideas???

[spleck]

PNs aren't a good way to mark towers. They're not really an ID, they're just used as a way to segregate two CDMA signals. PN offsets can be reused outside the range of the tower and any number scheme is usually only for a small geographic area.

On a Sprint BB, there are unique IDs for each sector of the tower. I would think VZW is the same way. Also, on Sprint, most of the sectors are consecutive ID numbers--are you seeing that on VZW? And is VZW reporting the cell site GPS coordinates?

[n7ryy]

Is the Blackberry the only one that can displays these unique ID's. When I have used field test on the LG or Nokia the only unique #'s I have seen are the PN's. Yes I have seen the PN's reused when I went to another Verizon market. I compiled a spreadsheet of the PN's I came up with in this area for Verizon and roaming over to US Cellular. Not seeing a GPS coordinate

As I might have said already this is a deactivated 8130 Pearl, I am not sure if this is skewing my results any? I hope to get a Verizon Tour next week when I switch over to VZW. So CDMA is a brave new world for me, I have been an AT&T TDMA and then GSM user since the dawn of time.

I have attatched some screen shots of the Signal Loc app running on the Pearl.

[n7ryy]

Here is a copy of the PN spreadsheet I made by the way, I guess I will just need to go thru and adjust it with the new ID's.