EG25-G support for emergency alerts (WEA/CMAS)

[newton688]

Hi All,

Does anyone know if the Quectel EG25-G modem is able to receive the new WEA or older CMAS alerts for tornados, amber alert, etc.?

Thanks,
Chris

[bcnaz]

Hi All,

Does anyone know if the Quectel EG25-G modem is able to receive the new WEA or older CMAS alerts for tornados, amber alert, etc.?

Thanks,
Chris

Great Question,  I have wondered about that as well.!

I wonder if that is 'Firmware'  or  'Software'  Related  ?      or even private or open source ?

Since they seem to be area related to city, county, or state  it may be by "Reported Location"  ?

[newton688]

Hi All,

Does anyone know if the Quectel EG25-G modem is able to receive the new WEA or older CMAS alerts for tornados, amber alert, etc.?

Thanks,
Chris

Great Question,  I have wondered about that as well.!

I wonder if that is 'Firmware'  or  'Software'  Related  ?      or even private or open source ?

Since they seem to be area related to city, county, or state  it may be by "Reported Location"  ?

I found some high-level information about the latest WEA 3.0 here from ATIS. But, it doesn't give me enough details about how the message is sent to the mobile device to figure out what is needed to get the Pinephone working:

https://www.atis.org/01_news_events/webi...ebinar.pdf

In one of the slides it says that the it's 3GPP and the mobile phone stores and checks the message to see if its current location falls within the affected area. I just don't know if that means it's just a special type of SMS or something different that the modem needs to support. I suspect it's the latter because I did a low level check for an SMS yesterday when the amber alert came out and I didn't see anything at all.

For now, I suppose I'll just need to keep checking my local weather website for the alerts, but that's not the best way to discover these alerts with the PP.

[bcnaz]

. As an EX user of both the Apple and Google devices

I am a bit paranoid of their spying and tracking, I am hoping that the warning system does not depend on some kind of closed source tracking.

Since we cannot escape our Carrier, hopefully it is a carrier supported service that can simply use your tower location.

I am currently using my Brave Heart and a cheap keyboard/message dumb phone.

[newton688]

.    As an EX  user of both the Apple and Google devices

I am a bit paranoid of their spying and tracking,  I am hoping that the warning system does not depend on some kind of closed source tracking.

Since we cannot escape our Carrier, hopefully it is a carrier supported service that can simply use your tower location.

I am currently using my Brave Heart and a cheap keyboard/message dumb phone.

If what I read from that link above is correct, it's up to the mobile device to receive a message from a 3gpp payload from designated cell phone towers and determine whether it's current position falls within the geometry in the message. There's not even a confirmation of receipt since the device is responsible for storing and determining whether a duplicate message was sent to it.

It's passing my tinfoil hat test so far.

Now, if only I could figure out the details of the message and whether the PP hardware will give us the necessary capability to catch the message.

[wibble]

https://access.atis.org/apps/group_public/documents.php

It looks like the specs aren't public, or don't have WEA in the title - search by name only finds 3 feasibility studies from 2015.

I'd expect it to be using a specific Cell Broadcast Message type - the reception of which is configurable with the AT+CSCB command. Notification and retrieval is similar to SMS messages. The modem probably doesn't handle anything beyond that - at least I haven't found reference to it in the AT command documentation. According to https://forums.ubports.com/topic/3952/no...lang=en-GB there isn't currently support for cell broadcast notification in UBPorts although ofono _might_ be capable of handling the messages. To fully support WEA 3.0 the device has to check its location against the geofence details in the message, and against user settings, so you're probably looking at a higher level than oFono or ModemManager anyway.