Supported devices

SignalScope manages two radio systems: airOS (Ubiquiti airMAX) and RouterOS (MikroTik). Everything else on your network, such as switches, ONUs, customer routers and even targets outside your network, can be registered in References with its own name and an availability watch.

System	Status	Since
Ubiquiti airOS (airMAX M and AC)	Supported	v1.0.0
MikroTik RouterOS 6 and 7	Supported	v1.3.0
Ubiquiti LTU	Under evaluation	—
TP-Link	Planned	—

Note on MikroTik RouterOS

MikroTik support has been tested on fewer models than airMAX. Devices with ax chips (the new RouterOS 7 wifi package) are not read — the app cannot see their radios. If you use those models, contact us at support@materis.io.

Choosing the system when logging in

The sign-in window has a System selector with two options, airOS and RouterOS. It comes preselected from the manufacturer the MAC revealed, and changes with one click.

Why you choose it instead of the app guessing

A MAC tells you the manufacturer, not the operating system, and MikroTik runs RouterOS across its entire catalog, which makes it hard to guess.

With RouterOS the transport is forced to SSH and the HTTP option is disabled. RouterOS is not supported over HTTP, and what you see open on the web port is WebFig, a browser interface that cannot be queried.

One device, one row per radio

A MikroTik box with two radios (the 2.4 GHz one and the 5 GHz one) produces two rows. The radios can be in different modes, so one row may land in Access points and the other in Stations, each with its own SSID, frequency, noise floor, signal and clients.

So as not to misread it:

• It is a single session. The app connects once to the box and both rows come out of it. Switching the session off, muting or forgetting affects the whole box, and the app warns you before you press.
• What belongs to the chassis repeats. CPU, memory, uptime, model, firmware and the port strip come out identical in both rows: it is one measurement shown twice.
• The choice of watched ports belongs to the device, not the row, and it applies to both.
• A disabled radio produces no row, because showing it with no data would paint it red forever. One that is on but not yet connected does show: a station hunting for a network is exactly what you want to see.
• A MikroTik with no wireless module (a switch, a CCR) produces no radio row at all. The sign-in says so, the device stays in Detected, and its place is References.

What you see from a MikroTik, and what you do not

What does arrive, the same as on airMAX:

Signal · chains (both polarities) · noise · SNR · SSID · real frequency and channel width · transmit power · model · firmware · CPU · free RAM · uptime · TX/RX traffic · the state of every Ethernet port with its speed, duplex and the name you gave it · an AP's associated clients · a station's connection time · and the radar in the Stations column, which asks the AP who is hanging off it so you can register them without scanning.

The following comes out empty because RouterOS 6 does not publish it. An empty cell tells the truth; an invented number does not.

Data	Why
Link latency	RouterOS does not measure latency over the air segment. On airOS the radio itself provides it.
Airtime	It does not publish channel occupancy, and without latency its AP has no Spikes column either.
Distance	What RouterOS calls current-distance is the ack-timeout setting, not a measurement: it read 1 over a link of a few meters.
Sessions	It is the kernel's conntrack, which describes something else.
Remote signal	A MikroTik station does not know how its AP hears it. If that AP is also in the app, its own client row carries the signal it hears.
Downlink / Uplink	RouterOS gives a single expected-throughput figure, with no direction.
Coordinates	See below.

Two readings change form but keep their meaning:

• Link quality. RouterOS does not compute the airMAX linkscore, so the column shows CCQ instead, labeled and without color: it has no calibrated thresholds, so it is reported but not judged. An AP with no associated clients publishes no CCQ and the cell stays empty.
• Modulation. RouterOS publishes no 8x-style index in either direction, so the column shows both rates in Mbps. For the same reason, on these devices that column is not compared between two Snapshots: the PHY rate jumps between steps from one reading to the next.

Coordinates: annotating them from the map

RouterOS does not allow writing coordinates to the device, because its GPS package is read-only. So that a MikroTik can appear on the Coverage map, the app lets you annotate its position by hand: you mark the point and record it as that station's position, either from the marked point's bubble or from the button on its card.

Two things worth being clear about:

• What you annotate is stored in the project, not on the device. The app says exactly that: "SignalScope publishes it, not the device".
• It never overrides what the radio reports. If that device ever reported its own position, the radio's would win.

That button does not exist on airMAX, on purpose. There, coordinates are registered on the radio itself (Location/GPS in its interface), where they are useful to any tool and not just SignalScope.

Technical details

Some aspects worth knowing:

• Devices with ax chips are not read. They use the new RouterOS 7 wifi package, which has no /interface wireless, so the app doesn't see their radios.
• A MikroTik's traffic light currently uses airMAX thresholds. They were audited axis by axis (signal, chains, CPU and memory are physics and percentages, and do not depend on the vendor), but they are not calibrated against real MikroTik links. Read it with reservation.
  • The known bias: SNR comes from subtracting signal − noise, and noise floors are not comparable. A hAP reads −103 dBm on 2.4 GHz and −107 on 5 GHz; a LiteBeam sits around −96. With the same signal, a MikroTik scores 7 to 11 dB better. It is not corrected with an invented number, and the risk falls on the benign side: less gets detected, but no alarms are invented.
• Services may sit on moved ports. If you changed the SSH port on the device, enter it in the Port field when signing in.

And whatever is not a radio

Everything else lives in References: a switch, an ONU, the customer's router, a node server, and also targets outside your network, such as your upstream provider's public IP or a domain. For each of them the app knows whether it answers and how long it takes, with its packet-loss percentage, and the sentinel warns you when it stops answering.

For a reference the app opens no session and reads no configuration: it only checks that it answers. That is the whole promise, which is why it always holds.