Cat Q10 – I want to hack it (batterystatus + signal strength)

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hey all,

I’ve been working on an RC-car project that uses the Cat Q10 5G MiFi router as its main mobile internet source. It's a solid device in terms of connectivity and hardware — but I’ve run into a brick wall trying to extract telemetry like signal strength and battery level programmatically.

What I’ve tried:

  • Captured network requests from the web interface at 192.168.1.1
  • Found that the frontend is a Flutter Web app using CanvasKit — so there’s no usable HTML DOM to scrape
  • Observed JSON-RPC style commands in DevTools like:

json

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "call",
  "params": ["<sysauth>", "file", "exec", {"command": "cricli", "params": ["signal_ext"]}]
}
  • Tried reproducing those RPC calls using Python and the requests library, but got either timeouts or 404 errors
  • Tried Selenium to simulate interaction, but the entire interface is drawn on a canvas — no text, no selectable elements
  • Tried using fetch() from JavaScript, but CORS blocks any access from external origins (as expected)

So my questions:

  1. Has anyone successfully reverse-engineered the Cat Q10 firmware or UI API?
  2. Is there a hidden API or CLI via USB, ADB, Telnet, or AT commands?
  3. Is it possible to flash custom firmware (like OpenWRT) or gain lower-level access?

I'm mainly just trying to extract basic status info like:

  • Signal quality (RSRP, RSRQ, SINR)
  • Battery level and charging status

Any leads or insights would be appreciated. I’m happy to share any progress I make or turn this into a public script/tool if I can break through.

Thanks!

2

Regarding openwrt - your device is not currently supported. To determine if that is possible, and to get you started with he development process, there is a guide linked below.

We cannot speak to or for compatibility with other custom firmware options - you’ll need to research that since we don’t have any info for you.