Meteorological Cooperative › Warning systems › Certified devices and RQUAK

Certified devices and RQUAK

A warning reaches a person through a device that knows how to receive it. The cooperative certifies devices that meet the conformance requirements and publishes a mark for them. Certification is voluntary, and no rule obliges any device distributed in the Republic to have it. For equipment with no native support, the cooperative publishes RQUAK, a client for every platform, compiled primarily for Linux.

CertificationVoluntary. A device may be distributed, used and connected in the Republic without it

Scope of a certificateAll three systems together. No device is certified for one alone

MarkThe three-band mark with the certificate number beneath it

TermFive years, renewable on retest against the format in force

ChargeNone. Testing is done by the cooperative within its own allocation

Client for uncertified equipmentRQUAK, published for every platform the cooperative can build for

What certification requires

A device holding the mark satisfies every requirement below. The full text of each is in the conformance specification, and the vectors that test them are published.

Conformance requirements
Requirement	Limit	Reason
Presentation latency	Within 400 ms of receipt	Every 400 ms is 1.4 km of S wave travel
Audible at a fixed level	Overrides mute and volume settings	A muted device warns nobody
Wakes a sleeping device	From any low-power state within 400 ms	Most events occur when most people are asleep
States every field received	All fields of the segment	The public learns the meaning of a warning from the broadcast itself
Handles cancellation	Within 400 ms of receipt	A false alert left standing damages the credibility of the whole system
Works with no account	No registration, login or subscription	Article 14 (2); a warning is a public act
Retains the last state offline	Displays the age of the information	A device out of contact should say so
Answers the monthly test	First Wednesday, 11:00	An untested receiver is an unknown receiver
Reports no personal data	Receive-only by default	Article 14; the cooperative learns nothing about who received a warning

Classes of certified equipment

Register of certified classes
Class	Models certified	Behaviour on a warning
Telephones and handsets	31	Tone, spoken message, full text; screen wakes at fixed brightness
Televisions and decoders	18	Message overlays whatever is showing; sound switches to the broadcast
Radio receivers	12	Switches to the warning channel and returns afterwards
Computer operating systems	7	System-level notice above every window; four are free software
Household alarm panels	9	Tone and spoken message; may open a door lock at the Imminent step
Lift controllers	6	Stops at the nearest landing and opens the doors
Rail and depot equipment	11	Applies service braking, holds trains at platforms, closes level crossings
Industrial controllers	14	Brings a process to its declared safe state
Public address installations	8	Sounds the broadcast in the space it serves
Peripherals and modules	22	Receiver boards, serial and GPIO output for equipment built locally

Certification records the model and the firmware version together. A firmware change affecting the warning path voids the certificate until retest.

What certification is not

A voluntary scheme

No rule requires certification. Telephones, computers, televisions and peripherals lacking the mark are distributed and used freely in the Republic, and a large share of the equipment in service has no native support of any kind.

The mark states that a device was tested and passed. It states nothing about the quality of the device in any other respect, and the cooperative recommends no model over another.

Anyone may test a device against the published vectors and reach their own conclusion. The vectors, the reference implementation and the test procedure are public, and the cooperative holds no monopoly on the assessment.

RQUAK

RQUAK is the client the cooperative publishes for equipment with no native support. It receives all three systems, presents the message in Fluidian or English, sounds the tones, and satisfies the same conformance requirements as a certified device where the host platform permits it.

It is written in C with no dependency beyond the standard library and the platform sound interface. The daemon occupies about 340 kB in memory and works on hardware some decades old. That was a stated design requirement, since a household with an old machine is a household that would otherwise receive nothing.

RQUAK builds published
Platform	Form	Conformance	Note
Linux	Daemon, GTK front end, terminal client	Full	The primary target; packaged for the distributions in use in the Republic
BSD family	Daemon, terminal client	Full	Built and tested on each release
Windows	Service and tray client	Full	Wake from sleep depends on the power configuration of the host
macOS	Background agent	Partial	The platform limits overriding the mute setting
Android	Application	Partial	Background scheduling may delay presentation beyond 400 ms
iOS	Application	Partial	Presentation while the device is locked is restricted by the platform
Embedded, bare metal	Library and reference firmware	Full	For microcontrollers; the basis of most certified peripherals
Text terminal	Client over a serial line	Full	Used on older equipment and in depots

Partial conformance means the platform prevents a requirement from being met. The specific requirement is named in the release notes for that build.

Delivery paths

A warning travels by every path at once, and a device uses whichever reaches it first. Duplicate arrivals are discarded on the message identifier.

Data network: The published feed over the network of the telephony federation, which is the fastest path for most devices.
Broadcast radio: A low-bit-rate channel alongside the ordinary programme, which reaches receivers with no network connection.
Television: Inserted into the broadcast stream and rendered by the decoder.
Cell broadcast: To handsets in the coverage area, including handsets with no subscription.
Wired installations: Public address, rail signalling and industrial controllers over their own circuits.

Limits

What may prevent a warning arriving

A device out of coverage receives nothing. Mobile coverage in the upper Vandorum valleys and in parts of Halvorum is incomplete, and broadcast radio is the only path that reaches some of those places.

A device that is switched off receives nothing. A device asleep receives the warning where its platform allows a wake, and the builds marked partial above may present the message late.

Within the blind zone described under detection and limits, no delivery path is fast enough, since the shaking arrives before the message does.

The cooperative publishes the conformance vectors so any person may establish what their own equipment does. Testing a device against them takes a few minutes and is the only reliable way to know.