PAW issues with SD on Nexus 7

[PeterG]

I've been using PAW for some months now and although I find it useful, there have been issues that are making it almost unusable for me

1) I am surprised how many aircraft I see but aren't showing up. I put this down to them not squawking or aren't equipped. Not a PAW issue
2) PAW seems to pick up Mode C/Mode S late ie after they pass me
3) Today turning final I received a warning about a PAW equipped microlight  counting down distance and telling me we were at the same level. I was at 500' and they were on the ground. It was worrying as I interpreted this as  I was catching it up on finals. It wasn't.
4) Finally, and more important. I find that the PAW/Nexus combination is unreliable. It drops out regularly and frequently - 5 times in a short period today. I receive a message that the connection has failed but it doesn't reconnect. In the end I reverted to the onboard GPS although PAW was still logging the flight and producing audio warnings

Are these issues that others are experiencing and is there a fix?

[exfirepro]

I've been using PAW for some months now and although I find it useful, there have been issues that are making it almost unusable for me

Hi Peter,

See comments below.

1) I am surprised how many aircraft I see but aren't showing up. I put this down to them not squawking or aren't equipped. Not a PAW issue

This is the most likely explanation, but it also depends on your PilotAware Configuration Settings.

2) PAW seems to pick up Mode C/Mode S late ie after they pass me

I did most of the Mode S testing and have never experienced this effect. I take it you do have Mode C/S Detect properly selected - it is 'OFF' by default. The distance you get alerts from Mode C/S then depends on what you have your Mode C/S Detect Range set to - for normal use the recommendation is 'Short' or Medium Range, both of which have always given reliable alerts for Mode S and with minor exceptions - addressed by the latest 20170706 release, for Mode C.also. If you are not receiving reliable alerts with both these settings correctly set, there is something wrong with your setup. Could the 1090 MHz antenna, for example be badly positioned or screened or a bad antenna connection? Are you receiving reliable ADSB signals from Commercial (CAT) Traffic? What settings are you using for Mode C/S vertical separation in PilotAware and for ADSB vertical separation in your Nav System? What Nav System are you using by the way?

3) Today turning final I received a warning about a PAW equipped microlight  counting down distance and telling me we were at the same level. I was at 500' and they were on the ground. It was worrying as I interpreted this as I was catching it up on finals. It wasn't.

This is 'Normal" behaviour within the design parameters. 'Level' means within a 15 degree +/- elevation from your current altitude. It does NOT mean at the SAME ALTITUDE.

4) Finally, and more important. I find that the PAW/Nexus combination is unreliable. It drops out regularly and frequently - 5 times in a short period today. I receive a message that the connection has failed but it doesn't reconnect. In the end I reverted to the onboard GPS although PAW was still logging the flight and producing audio warnings

Are these issues that others are experiencing and is there a fix?

What version of Nexus 7 are you using? Several users experienced wifi issues with 2012 versions of the Nexus 7 in the early days, which can usually be sorted by adjusting the wifi transmit power - strangely most dropouts were due to wifi power being too high when the tablet was at close range to the PAW. This was addressed generally by a reduction in default wifi power from 100mW to 10mW.

I personally use both an iPad Mini3 and a Nexus 7 2013 version and have never had any connection issues, but probably worth carefully experimenting with WiFi settings. By far the majority of users now have no problems.

Regards

Peter
(PilotAware Engineering)

[Admin]

Hi Peter

Further to Peter (exfirepro) comments

Q1. What version are you running ?

Quote
    3) Today turning final I received a warning about a PAW equipped microlight  counting down distance and telling me we were at the same level. I was at 500' and they were on the ground. It was worrying as I interpreted this as I was catching it up on finals. It wasn't.

This is 'Normal" behaviour within the design parameters. 'Level' means within a 15 degree +/- elevation from your current altitude. It does NOT mean at the SAME ALTITUDE.

We had a few people remark they did not like the way this works, the intention was to have you look at the correct part of the sky, in version 20170619 - this now reports the separation difference as per ModeC/S warnings, so in your case it would have said '500 ft below'

Regarding dropouts, can I confirm what drops out - is it the WiFi connection, or the SkyDemon connection
Of course if the WiFi disconnects, then SkyDemon will as well, but if SkyDemon disconnects, you may notice the WiFi is still up and running.
The test is to see if you can still get to the WiFi hotspot http://192.168.1.1

Thx
Lee

[Smaragd]

I have a Nexus 7, WiFi set at 10mW, and quite often get WiFi disconnect within the first 3 or 4 minutes after first connecting, but then stable for the rest of the flight.

[exfirepro]

Smaragd,

When this happens, are you near any other WiFi hotspot? my iPad very occasionally 'jumps' to the club wifi which is much stronger as I taxi past the clubhouse. Have you tried increasing the wifi strength slightly (in Configure/Network)?

Regards

Peter

[Smaragd]

Peter,

There are no other strong wifi signals on our strip. I actually wound wifi strength down to 20 because of earlier messages on the forum. I haven't tried moving it up again a bit. I've had the same effect at home, so I'll do that and see if it's any better.

Regards,

Trevor

[PeterG]

Dear all

Thanks for the comments

Generally the issue is SD will displays warning saying something like Connection with Butterfly lost. Sometimes it comes back, but other times SD will drop right out and I have to restart the app. On other occasions I have to click 'Go Flying' to get it back.

I'm using a Nexus 7 2013 for SD and I am wondering if it is the tablet that is at fault dropping the connection. It is very intermittent and PAW does continue to run.

[exfirepro]

PeterG,

Check that you are running the latest versions of PAW (20170721) and SkyDemon (3.8.2.77 on iPad - pretty sure it will be similar for Android). This will allow you to try the new UDP connectivity option, which is designed to make the connection between the two more reliable. You need to select 'PilotAware' rather than 'Flarm' in SkyDemon/Settings/Connectivity Options, then when you select 'Go Flying' you choose 'Use PilotAware'. Worth trying.

Regards

Peter R

[Rogerthedodger]

I used to suffer from the 'disconnection problems' between SD and PAW on Lenovo Android Tablet. The real pain was that when this disconnection happened and I looked down at my tablet - I had to click 'Go Flying' again on SD and get the whole thing running again by choosing FLARM and waiting for the connection. This also meant I lost the log of the flight for the whole time I was 'disconnected' which might have been several minutes and ended up with severla log files for one flight - a real pain. With the new versions of SD and PAW installed, I now use the SD option to connect to PAW (instead of the old FLARM option). The huge difference now is that although I still have the occasional 'disconnect', it now manifests itself in a totally different way. The 'connection' might be briefly lost but it automatically gets connected again and within a second or so, so I don't have to take any actions. To all intents and purposes I am now 'connected' the whole time with just a brief loss of the little plane icon on SD and a virtually continuous log of my flight and without me having to intervene.

[Admin]

to all users on Android
Please make sure that the 'Battery Saver Mode' is DISABLED
This interferes with the quality of service for IP traffic, and will exhibit itself as disconnects

Thx
Lee