Using Mac OS Airport Command Line Utility to Display and Speak RSSI Values at WLAN Book.com

April 2nd, 2011

Using Mac OS Airport Command Line Utility to Display and Speak RSSI Values

by Zaib Kaleem

Using Mac OS Airport Command Line Utility to Display and Speak RSSI Values

The airport command line utility available in Mac OS and can be very useful for troubleshooting and measuring WiFi signal strength.

To test on your Mac OS machine copy/paste into a terminal window.

Three ways to use the airport command line utility to display and speak RSSI values are below.

1) List RSSI value every 0.5 seconds

Command

while x=1; do /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I | grep CtlRSSI; sleep 0.5; done

Results

agrCtlRSSI: -69
agrCtlRSSI: -69
agrCtlRSSI: -69
agrCtlRSSI: -69

2) Only display most recent RSSI value.

Command

clear; while x=1; do /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I | grep CtlRSSI | sed -e 's/^.*://g' | xargs -I SIGNAL printf "\rRSSI dBm: SIGNAL"; sleep 0.5; done

Result

RSSI dBm: -69

3) Computer voice reading RSSI value.

Command

clear; while x=1; do /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I | grep CtlRSSI | sed -e 's/^.*://g' | say -v agnes; sleep 0.5; done

Result

Computer voice reading RSSI value every 0.5 seconds

Voice Options

change “agnes” in above to one of the other options from below.

Female Voices

$ say -v Agnes “hello world”
$ say -v Kathy “hello world”
$ say -v Princess “hello world”
$ say -v Vicki “hello world”
$ say -v Victoria “hello world”

Male Voices

$ say -v Bruce “hello world”
$ say -v Fred “hello world”
$ say -v Junior “hello world”
$ say -v Ralph “hello world”

Novelty Voices

$ say -v Albert “hello world”
$ say -v “Bad News” “hello world”
$ say -v Bahh “hello world”
$ say -v Bells “hello world”
$ say -v Boing “hello world”
$ say -v Bubbles “hello world”
$ say -v Cellos “hello world”
$ say -v Deranged “hello world”
$ say -v “Good News” “hello world”
$ say -v Hysterical “hello world”
$ say -v “Pipe Organ” “hello world”
$ say -v Trinoids “hello world”
$ say -v Whisper “hello world”
$ say -v Zarvox “hello world