Lost GPS (Merged)

[a.alexeev.p]

On my first flight with PilotAware I had a GPS mouse plugged in (instead of the default dongle). GPS Mouse and the device with dongles themselves were on the dashboard of PA28 with clear view of the sky. Attached to recommended anker powerbank and PAW supplied power cable. However in two flights 45 minutes  GPS signal was lost (once in each flight).

Fix was easy ie I just had to press stop navigating and start navigating again, but ideally I would like that not to happen again.

-SkyDemon
- Mode C/S Enabled +/- 2000
- Short Range
- Mode C/S+Filter Beta
-Audio cable was plugged in to my headset
-Version 20170721
- Paw bought in November 2017
-iPad Air first generation

Could you please advise me of how it can be sorted out? Unfortunately support never replied to me when I submitted a form online on the website.

[exfirepro]

Alex,

Can you tell me what version of SkyDemon you are running and also what connectivity option (Flarm or PilotAware) you had selected in SkyDemon please.

Regards

Peter

[a.alexeev.p]

Thank you for your reply Peter! It is 3.8.4.83 for SD. iOS 11.0.3 and PilotAware selected in Connectivity options

[exfirepro]

Thanks Alex,

I have to say that I have run a PAW 'Classic' with a remote GPS mouse for over 2 years now and connectivity with this setup has proved extremely reliable. If anything, moving the GPS clear of the main unit reduces screening of the WiFi dongle so this setup should make PAW connectivity more reliable.

When you say 'GPS was lost' - do you mean you got the standard SD message 'No data has been received from your GPS device for some time, and the connection is therefore lost. Check your device settings to ensure connectivity and try again' ? AFAIK this means that there was some sort of data interruption between the two devices, but not necessarily loss of GPS itself.

Does your iPad have a 3/4G sim and what setting do you have in 'Connectivity Options' for Internet Access? In some cases, 'Live Data when Planning and Flying' can cause SD to try to connect to the internet in flight and can cause a conflict if no Internet Access is available. If in doubt, select 'Live Data when Planning'.

If this happens again, it would help greatly if you can try to get a screengrab of the PilotAware Home Screen. The 'UPTIME' Status Line, shows how long PilotAware has been running since its last start and will confirm whether Pilotaware has continued to run through the loss of connectivity (which I suspect it has) and the screengrab will also confirm your GPS status.

The other thing you could try is varying the WiFi power in the Network settings, but do so carefully and check for issues before making any other changes. A minor change to 20mW might make a difference to connectivity reliability and would be worth trying. be aware that your unit will restart to make the change take effect. I would leave the Mode and Channel as they are meantime.

Let me know how you get on

Regards

Peter

[a.alexeev.p]

I don't remember a specific message to be honest as it was all in flight and little time to pay close attention. I don't think there was any error message, rather the aircraft symbol was not there so I just stopped navigation in SD and started it again it without needing to reconnect in settings or anything else.

Mine is 3G so yes indeed may be changing that setting could help.

Ok, so after landing but before switching PAW off I'd need go to 168.1.1 and do screenshot?

Thanks a lot again!

[tfede]

Hi all,

i know this is a topic already discussed in the forum but i need to understand what's happening to my unit.
I Always had this issue and with the new release with the lighter protocol (Pilotaware instead of FLARM) i was hoping in a better result.
I Always used an Ipad Mini 2 and thought it was a problem related to that because old and slow but now i am using an iphone 7 plus which sould be faster and getting the same problem: randomly i get the "no valid GPS signal".

GPS is not the issue, i have  my PAW unit also connected through RS232 adapter to  my EKP-V and it never have GPS disconnections or issues.

I tryed all which means power reductions, wifi and BT off on all the devices on board etc. but issue is still there.

If someone have some idea is welcome

Regards

Federico

[Admin]

Hi Federico
I am sure I have asked tge question already, but what is the power supply ?

The fact that the gps continues feeding the rs232 device, this rules out a full power related reboot, but could be related to a brown out on the wifi

Finally, can you reproduce this issue on the ground and in the air ?

Thx
Lee

[tfede]

Lee,

on the ground never had issues.

Tested several combinations for powering the unit including powerbank with 3 amps output but no changes.

Federico

[Ian Melville]

Frederico, can you try switching you iPhone to airplane mode, and enable only the Wi-Fi to connect to the PAW. make sure all other phones are off.

[a.alexeev.p]

I also wrote a post on similar topic but no resolution as testing showed yesterday. Even tried with iPad Pro this time to rule out poor tablet performance. The message I get is something around the lines “the was no GPS data received from the device for too long so we gave up on it”. Then skydemon also said “cannot access a disposed object. Object name system.net.sockets.socket” not sure if that is a separate SD issue but appeared straight after the GPS failure message.

Normally happens within first 5-15 mins since start of PilotAware. Happened on 3/3 flights but never was an issue at home. So on 2/3 flights it happened still on the ground. Was PAW  just feeling too cold?
Could it be that PAW just goes crazy from such close transponder signal?

Power is not an issue - always use same ANKER bank with recommended cable. Please help.

PS
Currently testing at home and getting ADS-B red (see screenshot). Whats that- not getting signal or faulty connection in the dongle?

[a.alexeev.p]

sorry, could not do the screenshot again but same thing happened now 3/3 times on aircraft within 5-15 minutes of launching PAW:  NO DATA HAS BEEN RECEIVED FROM YOUR GPS DEVICE FOR SOME TIME, AND THE CONNECTION IS THEREFORE LOST. CHECK YOUR DEVICE SETTINGS TO ENSURE CONNECTIVITY AND TRY AGAIN. Been working perfectly for past 2 hours at home. Even tried new tablet but on plane still happens. That same error message from SkyDemon was mentioned in a few other posts by members, but could not see a solution proposed as they normally had other issues that I did not experience.

By the way,  when testing home I see that PAW Auto-Generated a HEX code. When I fly it does not do any warnings about my aircraft but still shows my registration on SkyDemon when I fly. If I manually override HEX does that mean I won't see my own registration when I fly but I have to do it every time I change aircraft?

[exfirepro]

Alex,

Just re-read your posts on both 'loss of GPS' threads, but there is insufficient information to determine what is going on.

The Red ADSB 'light' is inconclusive. The entry shows that the ADSB Dongle is present ('Connected') but that while ADSB messages have been received (Messages=18823), no ADSB traffic has been received in the past 5 seconds  (+0).

I think the best option would be to ask Lee to take a look at your track log files. Can you download the relevant files from the 'Track' Screen on your PilotAware to a USB stick so you can transfer them to a PC or laptop and we can make arrangements to get them from you to do this. If you need help, I can talk you through this. Do you have a Dropbox account or similar that we can use to transfer the files as they will be pretty large?

Regards

Peter

[Paul_Sengupta]

It could be that there are too many ADS-B targets being received and Sky Demon is being overloaded.

I think there's going to be a revision at some point where you can limit the range of targets sent from the PilotAware, which might make things better.

In the meantime, perhaps try a smaller aerial for ADS-B! Maybe try leaving the aerial off the ADS-B side (the thin aerial) all together for a flight or two, see if that makes a difference.

[a.alexeev.p]

Thanks a lot Peter! Yes later I found that indeed ADS-B red might be due to me being at home

Please see the track file from two days ago as GPS dropout remains the main issue. As my memory serves me right SkyDemon gave the error message even before we started moving for power checks  (definitely before take off):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k8me5sb7mmtkfrn/2018-01-19_14-00.trk?dl=0

Thank you!

[a.alexeev.p]

well ADS-B is red only sometimes and other times it is green so guess it is how it should be then when not receiving messages, but main issue probably remains GPS