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WaveDigger
Hraness wrote this summary from a saved copy of the source. Quotations are taken word for word from the source.
gist
christianrowlands’s WaveDigger looks up Wi-Fi BSSIDs and LTE or 5G NR towers, then plots them on a deck.gl map. It talks to Apple’s public WLOC endpoint using protobuf work from apple-corelocation-experiments, with optional Mapbox tiles and a hosted demo at wavedigger.networksurvey.app. The repository is AGPL-3.0.
ideas
- BSSID lookup is the core loop. Paste a MAC in colon, dash, or bare hex form; the app validates it and queries Apple’s WLOC service for an approximate location.
- Cell search covers LTE and NR. LTE uses MCC, MNC, TAC, and Cell ID; NR uses MCC, MNC, TAC, and NCI, and NR results include neighboring cells in the same cluster.
- Apple WLOC is the location backend. Requests go to gs-loc.apple.com over protobuf, with int64 coordinate conversion and a China-region endpoint option drawn from prior reverse engineering.
- Map and history are first-class UI. deck.gl renders hits; recent searches stay available; desktop and mobile layouts are supported.
- The hard work is credited upstream. The README treats apple-corelocation-experiments’ protobufs, endpoints, and encoding notes as the enabling research.
quotes
“Dig into wireless signals to discover their physical locations.”
“This project would not be possible without the incredible work done by the apple-corelocation-experiments team.”
“Look up LTE towers (MCC, MNC, TAC, Cell ID) or 5G NR towers (MCC, MNC, TAC, NCI).”