Hi All - Especially russp and other iPhone Users,
I have spent most of the day working with Alan K, a pilot friend and fellow PilotAware user (who happens to work as an IT security specialist with a major bank), trying to get iGrid up and running on his PilotAware Rosetta from a Hotspot on his iPhone 13 Pro (running iOS version 15.5).
Alan messaged me early this morning, to say that he had just received and fitted an iGRID WiFi Connectivity Module which I sent him yesterday (the shop was out of stock again when he tried to order a batch for himself and a few of his Perth colleagues). Despite several attempts, he had been unable to see - let alone connect to - the Mobile Hotspot on his iPhone. In desperation, he had connected his PAW via the PAW Network screen to his Home WiFi, but despite this bringing up 'wlan1' and an 'iGRID IP', he was only seeing a couple of very weak rain showers at very long range (local weather reports confirmed that was actually all that was around) but of more concern, despite the fact that there was lots of traffic visible on FR24 (and when I checked via the VRS at East Fortune, lots of Flarm and GA Traffic reporting around Portmoak and elsewhere), Alan could only see a few local CAT ADSB Aircraft reporting on SkyDemon - most of which he could already see physically going past his window inbound to EGPH (his house sits alongside the approach path to 24).
My first enquiry (after checking the VRS and my own iGRID) was to ask Alan to confirm what was showing on his PAW Traffic Screen - he advised that at that point it was 'empty'. After confirming that Alan was using an iPhone, I then asked him to ensure that the Hotspot was 'active' and that the phone had been made 'discoverable'. He confirmed both points, but still no sign of the iPhone Hotspot on the PAW Network Screen even after a 'Refresh', so I suggested he try a Hotspot on a different device. He first tried connecting to his ASUS laptop, which produced a 'Green' Connection on the PAW Network Screen and 'Green' 'wlan1' and 'iGRID IP' on the PAW Home Screen, but still no iGRID Traffic reporting. This, however, confirmed that the WiFi Dongle was working, so I asked Alan to tell the system to forget the ASUS by clearing the Cache and try again with the iPhone.
By this time Alan had moved everything out into his garden, and reported that he was now seeing more traffic reporting on his PAW Traffic Screen, but all of it was CS or CSA.
None of which was reporting on the PAW Traffic Screen as reflected via iGRID and the iGRID traffic report on the Home Screen was still showing 'iGRID=0'. When I asked Alan if he was now seeing his iPhone Hotspot in the PAW Network Screen, he reported that it had shown briefly but that it had dropped out again when he tried to connect to it and that despite refreshing the list, he couldn't get it to appear again. Suspecting that he might have been trying to use an overly complex password, I asked Alan about this, but he confirmed that he had deliberately set both the Hotspot Name and Password to be simple, with no special characters. At this point, I had to break off to drive out to Bathgate so left Alan with a few ideas to try.
When I re-joined the conversation about an hour later, Alan reported that he had been testing with his iPad Mini, which
had shown up in the 'Network List' but despite trying 'Refresh', 'Clear Cache', etc. several times, PAW still wouldn't connect to it. After a bit more 'investigation', Alan came back to report that he had finally managed to get the iPhone Hotspot to connect, but that its 'visibility' on the Network Screen was extremely 'hit or miss' and that despite entering and saving the (simple) password he was unable to get the connection indicator in the Network List to 'go green'. He had also retried his Home WiFi, but as before - no 'iGRID' traffic was reporting.
At this point, Alan tried adjusting various settings on his phone, and reported that the phone Hotspot was showing more consistently in the Network Screen when he set 'Maximise Compatibility' in the iPhone Settings to 'ON', and 'Family Sharing' to 'OFF'. (These settings were new to me as I'm not an iPhone User, but I did find the same settings in my (2019) 4G SIM equipped iPad Mini 5.) With these settings, Alan finally managed to connect to his iPhone Hotspot and after a few minutes the iGRID Traffic report on the PAW Home Screen finally started to increase, confirming that he was now receiving data via iGRID. At this point, Alan realised that he had also noticed that he had his Vso setting in PAW set to 10Kts and had changed it to 0Kts to see if that was what was causing the lack of traffic reports, so he changed the Vso back to 10Kts, but that proved not to have been the deciding factor as the iGRID data report was still rising. We then decided to try a reboot and see what happened.
On reboot, the unit started, but the iPhone Hotspot initially failed to reconnect, so Alan turned 'Discover' off, then on again and 'Bingo' -
Connection but NO iGRID. Back to Config and reset Vso to 0Kts and iGrid started to rise again (which confuses the Heck out of me - Lee
).
After all this, however, we have found that Alan's Pilotaware now reconnects automatically to his iPhone Hotspot consistently after each reboot.
So it would appear that to use iGRID (at least with the more recent) iPhones: -
Connectivity seems to work best with 'Family Sharing' set to 'Off' and 'Maximise Compatibility' set to 'On'.
The phone needs to be made 'Discoverable'
before powering up PilotAware (easily done via the pull-down Control Panel at Top-Right on the phone 'Home Screen' - but be careful not to disable WiFi at the same time).
Edit: and from later posts, if you are still having problems, make sure your iPhone Hotspot Page is ‘live’ - i.e. actually ‘Open’ at the time you are trying to establish the connection.
Provided these settings are made, iPhones (at least the latest ones) seem to show on the Available Networks list on the PAW Networks Screen and connect (and re-connect) reliably.
Also, if testing 'On the Ground', temporarily set Vso to 0Kts (though I'm confused as to why this is the case as IMO the Vso setting was only designed to stop the PilotAware
transmitting when not moving and thus avoid unnecessary alerts from aircraft on the ground).
Hope this helps, and thanks to Alan K for his persistence in the face of what at first appeared to be considerable adversity.
Regards
Peter