iGrid connection to hotspot flakey - Solution is to open on hotspot page

[russp]

While I’ve managed at times to get PAW to connect to both the hotspot available on my iPad and my phone it simply refuses to automatically connect to the last one used or even show either my iPad or iPhone hotspots when  first turned on. It seems to always recognise the Dynon skyview Wi-Fi bin the aircraft and the hotspot connection shown in PAW always seems to default to this. With a lot of rescanning and cache clearing and saves it will eventually maybe see one of the hotspots (iPad or iPhone) with actual GSM data available and then might connect- once connected it works great … usually until it’s turned off. It’s unusable pretty much as currently configured. Any ideas how I can get it to work and connect reliably and repeatedly and automatically?

[AlanG]

Hi
There is an option to clear the casshe for hotspots in the Paw Network settings.
Try this then only select the hotspot you want to use and input its password and then that should be the only option for the Paw to select and connect automatically.
That's the best I can offer, others may know more.

Regards
Alan

[Seanhump]

Try going into settings, personal hotspot on the iphone and wait there - it'll probably connect

Not sure of the "why", but mine has done this now and then, and being on the hotspot screen on the phone seems to "make" it connect - sorry, but I have no explanation as to why!!

Most of the time it connects straight away - it's probably something to do with the other wifi signals in the area local to the PAW

[Admin]

This is an annoying iPhone feature
You may have to be in the hotspot menu itself, for a non-apple device to connect
Thx
Lee

[PaulSS]

I had SkyDemon drop twice today from the PAW WIFI. It's never done that before. I updated to Beta 20222206 (I think.....whatever is the latest out there) and the drop outs happened today whilst flying. I reset the PAW by pulling my Charge 4 CB and it did come back but it was a first for it to drop the WIFI. I did try to connect back to the PAW WIFI but it just wouldn't.......got the spinning wheel of frustration instead.

That having been said; when I did get everything up and running and the iGrid was online, it did work incredibly well. It was quite noticeable what traffic was disappearing when I lost GSM signal. When I got the green light again, loads more traffic appeared.

The rainfall worked well again. There was a fair bit behind me when I left Compton Abbas and it did all appear on the radar screen.

[exfirepro]

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

[grahambaker]

It’s probably worth pointing out that ‘maximise compatibility’ is a feature that was introduced with the iPhone 12, when the personal hotspot feature started using 5GHz wifi by default. You won’t see that setting on the PH menu for earlier phones as they only use 2.4GHz for the PH.

[exfirepro]

Hi Graham,

Thanks for that - that explains a lot as the PAW WiFi dongles only operate at 2.4GHz.

Apologies BTW for the long post, but I thought it might be useful to clarify the stages Alan K and I went through to try to track down the issue (especially as I wasn’t actually present).

Best Regards
Peter

[rblaksley]

While I’ve managed at times to get PAW to connect to both the hotspot available on my iPad and my phone it simply refuses to automatically connect to the last one used or even show either my iPad or iPhone hotspots when  first turned on. It seems to always recognise the Dynon skyview Wi-Fi bin the aircraft and the hotspot connection shown in PAW always seems to default to this. With a lot of rescanning and cache clearing and saves it will eventually maybe see one of the hotspots (iPad or iPhone) with actual GSM data available and then might connect- once connected it works great … usually until it’s turned off. It’s unusable pretty much as currently configured. Any ideas how I can get it to work and connect reliably and repeatedly and automatically?

I find exactly the same problem in that a Dynon skyview Wi-Fi seems to 'trump' any other Hotspot or Wi-Fi connection in the iGrid menu, and no amount of clearing the cache or re-scanning seems to get rid of it.

[Admin]

Clearing the cache simply removes all hotspots as candidates for connections
It will not remove them from the list of candidates, so the procedure should be as follows

clear cache
refresh
select desired hotspot in dropdown list
enter password
<save>

This will mean that this will be the ONLY hotspot considered as a candidate for connection
if this is not the case - then I have a bug

when a connection is made then the list will highlight the selected hotspot in green

Please let me know if the above procedure does not work for you.

alternately, do I misunderstand, and the problem is that Dynon is swamping the WiFi channels and not allowing other hotspots to be visible ?

[Admin]

Just to come back to a point I made earlier.

There is something not quite right about the iPhone hotspot.
The only way I can definitively get an initial connection, is to ensure the iPhone is on the HotSpot page - until the connection is made

This is apparently a 'security' feature in iOS for the connection of non-Apple devices

[Dave jones]

Hi All,
Just read admin latest post. That’s just what happens with my IPhone 8. The phone has to be on the hotspot page, then no problems.

Dave

[rblaksley]

Clearing the cache simply removes all hotspots as candidates for connections
It will not remove them from the list of candidates, so the procedure should be as follows

clear cache
refresh
select desired hotspot in dropdown list
enter password
<save>

This will mean that this will be the ONLY hotspot considered as a candidate for connection
if this is not the case - then I have a bug

when a connection is made then the list will highlight the selected hotspot in green

Please let me know if the above procedure does not work for you.

alternately, do I misunderstand, and the problem is that Dynon is swamping the WiFi channels and not allowing other hotspots to be visible ?

The 'Refresh' button has no effect at all, whether one has 'cleared cache' or not - the SkyView connection is the only one that shows up.

[Admin]

Have you tried this with the dynon turned off
Also is the hotspot visible on any other device ?

[steveu]

What do we have in the menus in the Dynon for Network set up and Wifi setup (System Setup menu then click right)?

Can we look in the Wifi set up menu and report back?

Also, given Dynon Systems are not cheap but their support is, in my very limited experience, good, what do they say about turning down the power of the Wifi out of the Dynon?

Lee is the expert but I'm just offering an off the cuff, outside the box solution...

Use a single device as a hotspot only. Don't try and control the PAW from the same device as is providing the hotspot.

Load a Wifi survey tool on your phone. I use WiFi Analytics. Do a WiFi survey on your aircraft. Make sure the Dynon WiFi channel and the PAW one are not the same. If they are, move the PAW one. Also check that your hotspot is not on the same channel as the Dynon. You have 12 channels to choose from.

My guess is Lee has nailed it with "is the hotspot available on any other device?"

My alternative view is that this is a Dynon setup problem, and that without a screen shot of the Dynon network and Wifi set ups, we are guessing in the dark.

In my own little world, the Dynon is far more than the cost of a decent motorcycle, so will never be an ownership option...