Stratus GPS signal for apps other than ForeFlight?

Fearless Tower

Fearless Tower

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Fearless Tower
I understand that Stratus is designed to work specifically with FF, but is there a way to utilize the GPS signal for other apps?

I just received my Stratus 2 yesterday and was playing around with it on the ground. GPS signal works in FF. ADS-B hit or miss at 80' MSL (on the bridge of the ship). I also tried opening up JeppFD and it is not picking up the GPS signal. Seems like the GPS input to the iPad should be universal, but wondering if there is some proprietary block on sharing the info across multiple apps?
 
I tried to use MotionX to track my last flight and it reported no GPS signal. I haven't tried to play with it to see if there was some setting I could tweak, so I'm as interested as you are in the answer to that one.
ADS-B hit or miss at 80' MSL (on the bridge of the ship).
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That's to be expected. FIS-B information is received from ground station relays so AGL altitude is necessary unless you happen to be very close to one.
 
midlifeflyer said:
That's to be expected. FIS-B information is received from ground station relays so AGL altitude is necessary unless you happen to be very close to one.
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Yes, I was technically AGL......I'm on an LHD....like standing on top of a tall building. The ADS-B signal was showing green on the unit, but was only picking up METARS for a handful of airports nearby. I imagine it will be better once up in the airplane.
 
Fearless Tower said:
I understand that Stratus is designed to work specifically with FF, but is there a way to utilize the GPS signal for other apps?

I just received my Stratus 2 yesterday and was playing around with it on the ground. GPS signal works in FF. ADS-B hit or miss at 80' MSL (on the bridge of the ship). I also tried opening up JeppFD and it is not picking up the GPS signal. Seems like the GPS input to the iPad should be universal, but wondering if there is some proprietary block on sharing the info across multiple apps?
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Seems the Stratus folks have entered into a very exclusive agreement with ForeFlight and their data is not useable to other apps. An update just came out from Xavion and this note was included in the release notes:

"(NOTE: We do NOT support the Stratus-2 receiver, because they use a closed format and have chosen to work ONLY with ForeFlight. So, the Stratus-2 receiver will NOT connect Xavion. However, if you do NOT have an iLevil or SageTech Clarity, then you can just enter the winds manually on the ADS-B page in Xavion. Then, Xavion will use those winds to make its' power-off guidance more accurate. This lets you use ForeFlight and Xavion in the cockpit with just one ADS-B receiver, but the closed format of the Stratus-2 makes it useless for all apps except ForeFlight)."

It would sure be nice to have some open standards in this arena.
 
LDJones said:
It would sure be nice to have some open standards in this arena.
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That is what I find annoying about all this ADS-B stuff...the portables are all roughly the same price, but only work with one specific shared program and no others....Garmim/Stratus/Dual Electronics.

So, the next question is....if the iPad is connected to Stratus via WiFi, will it also receive a simultaneous GPS signal from Bad Elf or Garmin via Bluetooth?
 
Yes. Just go to the 'Stratus Status' page in ForeFlight Mobile and turn the option "Use as GPS" to "Off" and it will then use any other available GPS source (BadElf, Garmin, Dual, internal receiver, etc) as it's GPS source.
 
FF does seem to get the GPS signal from the Garmin GDL39. Haven't had a chance to play the other way around
 
LDJones said:
Seems the Stratus folks have entered into a very exclusive agreement with ForeFlight and their data is not useable to other apps. An update just came out from Xavion and this note was included in the release notes:

"(NOTE: We do NOT support the Stratus-2 receiver, because they use a closed format and have chosen to work ONLY with ForeFlight. So, the Stratus-2 receiver will NOT connect Xavion. However, if you do NOT have an iLevil or SageTech Clarity, then you can just enter the winds manually on the ADS-B page in Xavion. Then, Xavion will use those winds to make its' power-off guidance more accurate. This lets you use ForeFlight and Xavion in the cockpit with just one ADS-B receiver, but the closed format of the Stratus-2 makes it useless for all apps except ForeFlight)."

It would sure be nice to have some open standards in this arena.
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It would. But the ADS-B issue is different from the GPS one.
 
OSH may be interesting this year with respect to these issues.

Garmin has dropped some prices on existing equipment, which has historically been the tip-off for new things to come.

A happenstance conversation with an Aspen guy earlier today confirmed my impression that they have some exciting stuff as well. Guess we'll know soon.
 
Maybe I am missing something here. But I do not have any of the problems mentioned above with my Samsung S3. I just look at the aviationweather.gov either on the ground or in-flight and get radar, satellite, ceilings, turbulence, visibility, icing and more that I would not get with ADS-B or XM and for free. At 10,000ft connection is sporadic but you can still get radar pictures and others as long you do not select the loop mode. I can also text my party on the ground about my ETA. This is why I dropped my XM subscription and don't bother with ADS-B WX.

BTW on my last flight at 12,000ft I found out that the Samsung S3 internal GPS works very well with the road Navigation app. You get the geographic map geo centered but not the McDonalds or the gas station locations, Oh well.

José
 
I had a similar issue when I realized my Stratus 2 did not work with Cloud Ahoy. When I wrote an email to ForeFlight I got an answer back saying we don't make that software contact Appareo. When I inquired with Appareo this is the answer I got,
"Thank you for contacting Appareo regarding Stratus. At this time, Stratus will only talk with ForeFlight. When we first released Stratus, we decided that we wanted to make sure that everything worked seamlessly with the software app. By allowing Stratus to "talk" to several apps we felt this would introduce a lot more possible issues. Our partnership with ForeFlight is such that any issues and problems are resolved together quickly. At this time, there are no plans to open Stratus to other devices but I'm not saying is not possible in the future sometime."

So, in other words the software is completely proprietary and will only work with ForeFlight.

I did get to take the Stratus 2 on a 600+nm flight in the King Air. The stratus worked perfectly as advertised. No problems with the heated grid in the windshield. I was able to compare it to the XM weather downlink in the aircraft and they were in agreement.
 
So here is a silly question....can an iPad simultaneously receive two different GPS signals....say one from Stratus over WiFi and a separate one through BlueTooth?
 
Fearless Tower said:
So here is a silly question....can an iPad simultaneously receive two different GPS signals....say one from Stratus over WiFi and a separate one through BlueTooth?
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In this case at least, I think yes - Since the Stratus is doing its own thing, it's not available through the Core Location API that most software is going to use for location information, thus leaving that open for another device.

Apps like CloudAhoy and Xavion still work when I'm using the Stratus, they just work through the internal GPS instead.
 
Might want to confirm this: I haven't tried this in flight but, on the ground, Maps, the Garmin app, and other apps that can use wifi for location services seem to be able to read it off Stratus. For example, when I tried to get MotionX to read a GPS location when Stratus was active, it failed. But when I changed it to read Wifi location, it had no problem.

My guess is that Stratus gets its own position by an internal GPS but the position information it transmits to the iPad (including to FF) is wifi, not GPS. Net result is the same: Stratus will provide accurate gps location to any iPad app, but translated via wifi rather than as an external GPS.

I'll try it with motionX and maybe Cloud Ahoy next time I fly

EDIT: Just tried Cloud Ahoy on the ground. No go. Cloud Ahoy is specifically looking for a GPS which Stratus apparently is not (at least with respect to it's iPad interface). Does that make any sense to anyone except us geeks?
 
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midlifeflyer said:
Might want to confirm this: I haven't tried this in flight but, on the ground, Maps, the Garmin app, and other apps that can use wifi for location services seem to be able to read it off Stratus. For example, when I tried to get MotionX to read a GPS location when Stratus was active, it failed. But when I changed it to read Wifi location, it had no problem.

My guess is that Stratus gets its own position by an internal GPS but the position information it transmits to the iPad (including to FF) is wifi, not GPS. Net result is the same: Stratus will provide accurate gps location to any iPad app, but translated via wifi rather than as an external GPS.

I'll try it with motionX and maybe Cloud Ahoy next time I fly

EDIT: Just tried Cloud Ahoy on the ground. No go. Cloud Ahoy is specifically looking for a GPS which Stratus apparently is not (at least with respect to it's iPad interface). Does that make any sense to anyone except us geeks?
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Hmmm.....the problem may be JeppFD then. When I am at home connected to he house wi-fi, I am not getting any position info in JeppFD either, but I am getting it in FF and other map apps.

Trouble is, I see no way to change where JeppFD gets its signal from. Anyone know if you can change that?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
Follow-up: I had a chance to try it in flight. No, the Stratus feed, even just the GPS one, is ForeFlight-specific. I tried a number of other apps and no-go. Best I can figure, the wifi reads I was getting on the ground was due to the iPad location service's ability to get a course location by reading wifi in the area, even if it's not connected to that wifi. Up in the air, nothing for it to read.
 
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