Running a survey

A survey is the core of ARRF: you walk a space and coloured cubes drop where you measured. This page covers the survey lifecycle and the on-screen controls.

The survey lifecycle

In words: you choose a source and a capture mode in the lobby. A demo walk starts immediately. An Any Wi-Fi survey first checks that your router and the test server answer: if neither does you’ll see “Nothing to measure”, and if only part answers you can Start anyway and the survey measures what it can reach. A live RUCKUS survey first probes SSH on each AP and refuses to start if none answer, or lets you Start anyway with the unreachable ones skipped. You walk, cubes drop, and Stop ends the run — snapshotting the LiDAR mesh into a floor plan if one was captured, then saving to History. With three or more cubes the Results screen opens on its own; with one or two you get a brief note instead. If the write to storage fails, ARRF says so and offers Retry or Open anyway rather than losing the walk silently.

What do I pick in the Survey lobby?

The Survey tab opens on a lobby with these choices:

Where — the survey source:
- Any Wi-Fi — the phone measures latency, loss and speed on whatever network it’s on; no AP access needed. See Any Wi-Fi survey.
- Demo — a simulated walk with no hardware. A fresh install starts on this source. See Demo mode.
- A RUCKUS One venue, or RUCKUS APs by IP — the RUCKUS vendor pack, which adds the APs’ own signal readings. See Connecting your APs.
Site — which site the survey is filed under (optional; hidden for the demo). See Rooms and sites.
How — the Capture mode (below).

On a RUCKUS source, a Measure experience toggle (on by default) also runs the phone-measured tests alongside the AP readings.

Tap Start Survey to begin. The demo is always free; every real survey needs the free trial or the unlock — see Free trial and unlock. The first survey that uses the internet tests asks about them before it starts — see Internet tests and privacy.

For a live RUCKUS survey ARRF first runs a pre-flight — a bare SSH-port probe of each AP — and shows which answered. If none answer, you’ll see “Can’t reach your APs” and can’t start; if only some answer, you can Start anyway and offline APs are skipped.

Which capture mode should I use?

Pick the mode in the lobby’s How card.

Mode	How it works	Best for
Continuous (default)	Walk and cubes drop automatically — hands-free, no tapping. On Any Wi-Fi a cube drops every couple of seconds, with speed bursts as you go.	Fast coverage of a space.
Stop & sample	Stand still and tap the Capture button. On a RUCKUS survey one cube drops on the next fresh reading; on Any Wi-Fi the phone measures for a moment, runs a speed burst, then drops a cube.	Deliberate, accurate spot measurements.

Placement throttle

To keep the AR scene readable, ARRF spaces cubes out. Two floors apply in Continuous mode, both set in Settings → Survey & capture:

Placement throttle — the minimum distance between cubes. Default 0.3 m.
Live cube interval — the minimum time between cubes. Default 1.0 s.

Raise them for a sparser map, lower them for denser sampling.

What does the AR HUD show?

While surveying, the camera view carries a heads-up display:

Cube count — a large running total of cubes placed.
Serving-AP chip — on a RUCKUS survey, the AP your phone is currently associated to (in that AP’s outline colour), with its band, channel, and width. On Any Wi-Fi it shows the network name and the access point (BSSID) the phone is on, with the vendor when known.
Live readout — on a RUCKUS survey, the current dBm, SNR, and grade, plus a live signal sparkline. On Any Wi-Fi, the Wi-Fi latency (p95 to your router) in ms with loss and jitter, a live round-trip trace, the last speed burst, and the live call quality and DNS time.
Room — a large Room: … control that tags the cubes and notes that follow. See Rooms and sites.
Capture button (bottom centre) — in Stop & sample it arms the next cube; in Continuous it pauses/resumes the automatic sweep.
Discard (trash) — after a confirmation, discards every cube placed so far: “The survey keeps running; your AP pins stay put.”
Full screen — hides the HUD for an unobstructed camera view; capture keeps running. Tap again to exit.
Chips (top right) — roam markers (flag), privacy blur (eye), Place APs (map pin), Add note, and colour. They toggle roam posts, blur the camera, open the AP-pinning and proposed-placement sheet, drop a note, and change what cubes encode. See Cube colors, labels, and detail and AP locations and roaming.
Tracking state — hints like “Move slower” or “Point at detail” when ARKit needs a better view to track.
slowed ×2 / slowed ×4 — a thermometer chip that appears only when the iPhone is thermally throttling. See Long walks and hot phones.

The first time you start a survey, a How to run a survey overlay explains the walk. Tick Don’t show this again, or turn off Settings → Survey & capture → Show survey instructions.

The screen stays awake for as long as a survey is running on screen — auto-lock would kill the AR session mid-sweep. Normal auto-lock returns when you stop, switch tabs, or background the app.

How do I add a note or photo to a spot?

Tap the Add note chip (note icon, top right). ARRF drops a note where the phone is aiming and opens the note editor:

Section	What it holds
Tags	One-tap reasons a spot reads badly: Metal racking, Elevator, Glass wall, Concrete wall, Microwave, Dead spot reported, AP obstructed, Ceiling AP.
Note	Free text — “What’s here?”
Photo	Take photo of camera view captures what the camera sees now. Cubes and labels aren’t included.

Tap Save. Notes are tagged with the current room, show as numbered badges on the floor plan, and get their own page in the PDF report. Open an existing note to edit it or Delete note.

How do I blur the camera background?

Tap the privacy blur chip (eye icon) and pick Off, Light, Medium, or Strong. The default is Off; the same setting is Settings → Display → Blur camera background.

The blur softens the live camera image — whiteboards, screens, faces, documents — while cubes and labels stay sharp. Screenshots and screen recordings of the survey are blurred too. It is display-only: ARKit still tracks from the unblurred camera, so placement accuracy doesn’t change. ARRF never saves the camera feed; the only camera image it stores is a note photo you take yourself.

When AR is interrupted

Two banners can appear over the camera:

Banner	What happened	What to do
”Camera paused — capture resumes when it’s back.”	A phone call or Control Center took the camera. Capture pauses deliberately, because a frozen pose would place cubes in the wrong spot.	Nothing — tracking relocalises against the saved world map and already-placed cubes stay put.
”AR stopped: …” with Restart AR and Stop & save	A fatal ARSession error, such as the camera becoming unavailable or tracking failing unrecoverably.	Restart AR begins a fresh AR session; Stop & save ends the survey normally. Readings collected so far are kept either way.

Long walks and hot phones

Two guards keep a very long survey from degrading:

Thermal backoff. When iOS reports thermal pressure, ARRF slows its AP polling — ×2 at serious and ×4 at critical — and shows a slowed ×2 or slowed ×4 chip at the top of the screen. Cubes keep dropping, just further apart. Cooling the phone restores full rate on its own.
A 20,000-reading ceiling. Past 20,000 placed readings (roughly two hours of continuous capture), ARRF halves the set by keeping every other reading, newest always retained. Spatial coverage stays roughly uniform and the walk stays exportable; the survey is not truncated and does not stop.

Stopping and saving

Tap the red Stop Survey button to end. Stop also saves:

Every stopped survey with data is auto-saved to the History tab.
With at least 3 cubes, the Results screen opens automatically. With fewer, you’ll see a brief “Saved to History (N cubes)” note and can reopen it from History any time. A Stop with no cubes shows “No readings captured — nothing saved”.
If the save itself fails, a “Survey not saved” alert offers Retry or Open anyway — see History and saved surveys.

Next steps

Cube colors, labels, and detail What the cubes encode, and what tapping one shows you.

What the phone measures How each Any Wi-Fi metric is measured, and its colour scale.

Results and the survey grade The verdict, the grades, and the cards that open when you stop.

History and saved surveys Where every stopped survey lands, and how to reopen, rename, or delete it.