External GPS units
External GPS units, which are generally connected to your device by Bluetooth, will almost certainly work as a source of position information. The connection to external GPS units is managed by the operating system (iOS) rather than by AvPlan. Hence if a device is said by the manufacturer to be compatible with iOS, then it should work. All you have to do is make the bluetooth connection. The device will then become the default source of GPS position data for your iPad or iPhone.
External GPS units that connect by Wifi may also work, but typically require dedicated code within AvPlan to make use of their data stream. uAvionix SkyEcho2 units are supported.
Avidyne and Dynon panel units
If you connect your AvPlan device to your Avidyne of Dynon panel unit’s wifi network, your iPad should receive location data from the unit. The next section has a few more details.
uAvionix SkyEcho2
If you connect your device to a SkyEcho2 (using its WiFi network), then as well s receiving ADS-B In data for traffic display, AvPlan will also use the SkEcho’s NMEA (GNSS) data stream for location data.
A Note on tethering non-GPS (WiFi only) iPads to iPhones
iPhone to iPad tethering will not provide an iPad with GPS position.
AvPlan works by requesting the operating system on your iPad to provide location services; a GPS-enabled iPad will return an accurate location when requested. However, if the iPad decides that the location information it is receiving is not of sufficient quality (because it cant see enough GPS satellites, for example), it will not pass location data to AvPlan or any other app.
When location data is being provided by a GPS inside the iPad the signal will generally be of high quality and will will be rapidly updated. But when you are tethering to a phone, the location information provided by the phone is only sent sporadically in between all the other tasks happening on the iphone and iPad (like sharing the internet). The data quality is consequently poor, and generally insufficient to deliver continuous location data to the iPad.
It can therefore appear that tethering for a location signal is working, but it It won’t work for long, and the transfer of location data will typically fail more often than it succeeds, especially when you start moving. Hence tethered location data is simply not good enough to be useable.
If you have a WiFi-only iPad, then to get a GPS location you will need a dedicated external GPS receiver to connect to it. A number of these are listed on the AvPlan-EFB website noted at the top of this section.
Also note that the external GPS must be talking directly to the iPad. Connecting it to a tethered iPhone will not solve the above problem.
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