Garmin Pilot for Android -- Tech Support, Tips, Tricks

Goofy said:
Just got my Nexus today and loaded Garmin. Is there a trick to having more than one layer on at a time? Seems only one is the way it's working now - not ideal.....:rolleyes2:
Sure like it so far. Flew to work in San Jose this morning. Kinda miss the Vnav and airspace popup warnings from my 396 though....
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Never mind.
 
ForeFlight is piling on the features...come on Garmin
 
Jay Honeck said:
You need to get that unit fixed/replaced. My new N7 (replaced after Mary shattered my original unit) is just as GPS rock solid as ever.
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I started own that path last week but they want a factory reset tried before I send it in and that's a several hour process to get it setup again.
 
LDJones said:
I started own that path last week but they want a factory reset tried before I send it in and that's a several hour process to get it setup again.
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Actually a factory reset on an Android tablet is simplicity itself. It automatically restores your apps. 'Tis a wonderful feature.
 
Thanks Jay. Long ago when working for a very large computer company, I was told that every computer needed a "damn good thrashing" every once in a while (in the form of a reboot). ;)

Hoping this thrashing will help with some of the bizarre stuff I'm seeing.
 
Marauder said:
Thanks Jay. Long ago when working for a very large computer company, I was told that every computer needed a "damn good thrashing" every once in a while (in the form of a reboot). ;)

Hoping this thrashing will help with some of the bizarre stuff I'm seeing.
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I did a reset on my first N7 when it became laggy. It did the trick.

It automatically reinstalls your apps -- but it also lets you choose not to install them as well. With my first Nexus 7 I was in an app frenzy and prolly had 200 apps on board. One (or more) of these apps was probably the culprit making it run laggy.

I chose not to reinstall probably 70% of the apps, since I wasn't using them. The tablet went back to lightning fast.

With my new one, I knew precisely which apps I wanted. Again, all of my apps were "remembered" in my Google account, so starting from scratch isn't the enormous nightmare of, say, restoring a Windows machine.

Android/Google really got this right.
 
Since this thread is on the Garmin/Android platform, I have question pertaining to database updates. Our next cycle is here. When I loaded it up on the iPad, no issues. Never had an issue with the iPad updates. The Nexus version on the other hand has been a nightmare. Frequent "unable to load database" messages and a few crashes. Anyone else experience this?
 
Marauder said:
Since this thread is on the Garmin/Android platform, I have question pertaining to database updates. Our next cycle is here. When I loaded it up on the iPad, no issues. Never had an issue with the iPad updates. The Nexus version on the other hand has been a nightmare. Frequent "unable to load database" messages and a few crashes. Anyone else experience this?
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Not here. Updates have been easy, nonevents.
 
Well, I guess I'm one of those lucky Nexus owners... We'll see how things work out after my "damn good thrashing"!
 
LDJones said:
But not all your data.
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True that. However, the only data I keep on the Nexus 7 is Garmin Pilot related. Everything else is in the Cloud. (Which, BTW, is why the onboard storage wars are, IMHO, silly. I never used up 16 GB, let alone 32 or 64.)
 
Android new version release. 2.4 now current
 
Marauder said:
Thanks Jay. Long ago when working for a very large computer company, I was told that every computer needed a "damn good thrashing" every once in a while (in the form of a reboot). ;)

Hoping this thrashing will help with some of the bizarre stuff I'm seeing.
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Just a sign of bad code... no computer technically should need a reboot for anything... ever... except updating the kernel of a modern OS.
 
Badger said:
Android new version release. 2.4 now current
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Sweet! They've added a split screen for traffic. That will be slick.

Scratch pad is nice, too.

The new map on the active flight plan screen is a nice touch, too.

All good stuff!
 
The tip planning page is totally different. It actually works now.

Unfortunately, I'm a renter and had multiple aircraft profiles defined. It looks like only one survived the version change.
 
Matthew said:
The tip planning page is totally different. It actually works now.

Unfortunately, I'm a renter and had multiple aircraft profiles defined. It looks like only one survived the version change.
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Non of it survived for me...

When it says Sync'ing, where is it syncing too? Perhaps it is easier to do things on the other end?
 
ja_user said:
Non of it survived for me...

When it says Sync'ing, where is it syncing too? Perhaps it is easier to do things on the other end?
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Probably flygarmin.com. That is where my stuff is.
 
All my aircraft profiles (except one) and all my stored flight plans (except two) are gone.

I don't think I have syncing enabled on flygarmin.com.






Edit : i also noticed a setting for "Display stadium TFRs - on/off" i'll have to see what that does.
 
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Matthew said:
All my aircraft profiles (except one) and all my stored flight plans (except two) are gone.

I don't think I have syncing enabled on flygarmin.com.






Edit : i also noticed a setting for "Display stadium TFRs - on/off" i'll have to see what that does.
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I have both the iPad and Nexus version of it. You will need to enable synching on both to make sure you don't lose anything. Also, the TFR for stadiums is already in the iPad version, it is for all of the sporting event stadiums that have them when events are going on. You will be surprised at how many there are.
 
Also looks like any user waypoints I might have had (I think just one) are gone, too.

--


I was just on the flygarmin.com site and noticed that I did have a log-in (probably I created it when I first installed Garmin Pilot). There are a couple things on there where I can add a device.

How do I enable syncing? On the Nexus?
 
Matthew said:
Also looks like any user waypoints I might have had (I think just one) are gone, too.

--


I was just on the flygarmin.com site and noticed that I did have a log-in (probably I created it when I first installed Garmin Pilot). There are a couple things on there where I can add a device.

How do I enable syncing? On the Nexus?
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Unfortunately it looks like user waypoints are blown away with the latest release. Anyone who hasn't upgraded may want to wait until a point release comes out with a fix.

Regarding sync - there isn't a way to associate your account with flygarmin on Android. However, it does sync all your data to the 'cloud', which simply means that if you install on a new device (or delete/reinstall) (and log in), all your info will be there.
 
ryarya said:
Regarding sync - there isn't a way to associate your account with flygarmin on Android. However, it does sync all your data to the 'cloud', which simply means that if you install on a new device (or delete/reinstall) (and log in), all your info will be there.
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I do have my Nexus backed up into the Google cloud. The way I read an earlier post made me think there was a way that flygarmin.com could backup data from the GarminPilot app.

You have some good advice - I'm guessing there will be a bug-fix (hopefully) that will preserve any user-defined waypoints, aircraft profiles, flight plans, and anything else that I haven't noticed missing yet.
 
Totally disgusted with this App. Two flights and never get a sectional at a scale that is useful. Zoom in and get a blank screen with my course and "weather loading" forever. Tossed it in the backseat and went back to the 396 with multiple layers all showing at once, no sectional issues, no loading issues, airspace warnings, vnav etc etc. Oh well.
 
Goofy said:
Totally disgusted with this App. Two flights and never get a sectional at a scale that is useful. Zoom in and get a blank screen with my course and "weather loading" forever. Tossed it in the backseat and went back to the 396 with multiple layers all showing at once, no sectional issues, no loading issues, airspace warnings, vnav etc etc. Oh well.
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A couple times i've "flown off the map". If you don't actually download the sectional onto the device, as soon as you are out of wireless contact with a network connection you'll lose the sectional. A couple times i've traveled to a place where i hadn't downloaded the sectional and the app reverts to a basemap that doesn't show much.
 
Matthew said:
A couple times i've "flown off the map". If you don't actually download the sectional onto the device, as soon as you are out of wireless contact with a network connection you'll lose the sectional. A couple times i've traveled to a place where i hadn't downloaded the sectional and the app reverts to a basemap that doesn't show much.
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Like any tool, you need to know how to use it.
 
The sectional is there. Only shows up when you zoom out far enough. Zoom in to a useful scale and it goes to a checkerboard then white screen. Downloaded all updates and local charts a few hours before.
 
Goofy said:
The sectional is there. Only shows up when you zoom out far enough. Zoom in to a useful scale and it goes to a checkerboard then white screen. Downloaded all updates and local charts a few hours before.
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That's different than just not having the sectional saved locally. I don't think i've seen that before.
 
Goofy said:
The sectional is there. Only shows up when you zoom out far enough. Zoom in to a useful scale and it goes to a checkerboard then white screen. Downloaded all updates and local charts a few hours before.
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I have never seen that.
 
I have to say, the comment about "going back to my 396" gave me the best laugh of the day.

I've got the 496 -- a full generation faster than the 396 -- and it is so slow and tiny that I want to tear it out of the panel in frustration, after getting used to the Nexus 7's gorgeous color screen.

Best of all was the comment about the 396 showing "multiple levels at once". Multiple levels of WHAT? There is no sectional depiction of any kind on a 396, nor traffic, nor weather (without the uber-expensive XM subscription). And even if there were, imagine trying to interpret traffic on that postage-stamp screen?

If the OP is reading this, I suggest uninstalling/reinstalling Garmin Pilot. You should not be able to zoom down to a blank screen, as you described. There is something wrong.
 
I just recreated the problem with the checkerboard/no map.

I turned off wifi, then zoomed way out, then zoomed in on a part of the US where I know i didn't have a sectional downloaded. When i started to zoom in, the display goes to the checkerboard display, then no map.

If you have the proper charts downloaded - i dunno.
 
Well....this OP figured out I need to get everything ready to go flying where I still have a WiFi connection then the chart works. And the layers are actually not much different than scrolling through the 396 (which, by the way Jay, has taken me across the country from Pensacola to Long Island to Seattle to Oshkosh several times and home to California several times etc. etc. with no problems) to see different information. Just thought it would be nice to see TFRs and wind and a couple other things on the same screen....but I guess that's asking too much of Garmin.
Anyway, love my little Nexus but the screen is WAY too dark for a canopy so those who are thinking of this setup in a canopy are not going to be as happy as the salesmen on this forum. It is dark and hard to see with sunglasses even like mine which are CLEAR on the bottoms to see better. On my poor little 396 I get bright vision, airspace warnings, Vnav directions and absolutely NO issues with wifi, preflighting the unit, checkerboard views etc.
I'm guessing Garmin does this intentionally to keep folks like me stuck on my little 396. Fortunately I can see the stamp sized screen just fine, it has taken me all over the country just fine and since I can't hardly see the Nexus in my cockpit I'll just have to keep flying coast to coast with the 396 and all it's terrible drawbacks......
The nexus has become nothing more than a downstairs internet browser where I don't have my main computer.
 
I have to turn up the brightness on the Nexus almost all the way when i take it flying during the day.
 
Goofy said:
Well....this OP figured out I need to get everything ready to go flying where I still have a WiFi connection then the chart works. And the layers are actually not much different than scrolling through the 396 (which, by the way Jay, has taken me across the country from Pensacola to Long Island to Seattle to Oshkosh several times and home to California several times etc. etc. with no problems) to see different information. Just thought it would be nice to see TFRs and wind and a couple other things on the same screen....but I guess that's asking too much of Garmin.
Anyway, love my little Nexus but the screen is WAY too dark for a canopy so those who are thinking of this setup in a canopy are not going to be as happy as the salesmen on this forum. It is dark and hard to see with sunglasses even like mine which are CLEAR on the bottoms to see better. On my poor little 396 I get bright vision, airspace warnings, Vnav directions and absolutely NO issues with wifi, preflighting the unit, checkerboard views etc.
I'm guessing Garmin does this intentionally to keep folks like me stuck on my little 396. Fortunately I can see the stamp sized screen just fine, it has taken me all over the country just fine and since I can't hardly see the Nexus in my cockpit I'll just have to keep flying coast to coast with the 396 and all it's terrible drawbacks......
The nexus has become nothing more than a downstairs internet browser where I don't have my main computer.
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And my 496 has taken me from coast to coast, many times. That doesn't mean that I prefer it to the faster/bigger Nexus 7 screen.

Interesting comment about the brightness trouble under a canopy. Since we're actively looking for an RV-8A, that would be a killer for us. Something I had not considered.
 
Jay Honeck said:
Hmmm. When I start Garmin Pilot, it automatically defaults to maximum brightness.
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I think it has an auto and manual setting. I have mine set to max. Leaving it at yhe normal day-to-day brightness just isn't daylight readable enough for me.
 
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