Navionics Advice?

[C lectric]

I’m having trouble with Navionics on my iPad, non cellular iPad I use Bad Elf gps and have been using for years in various locations no problems.

Now it starts up and navigates leaving a location but after 30 minutes or so, it locks up and shows our position as being where we left and won’t change, did the same on Aqua maps.

Thinking I need to buy a new iPad with cellular? Any ideas?

On which are you having trouble? Are you having trouble with both Navionics
And Badelf now?



Just an out there thought. You and several others are in the Great Lakes.
Any chance the units are being affected by iron deposit below or in the area.

Check your compasses. This is a total guess.


With our frequent and growing reliance on laptops, tablets and cell phones Maybe these devices are more prone to mineral interference.

The older GPS units and plotters all had dedicated external antennas and usually they were mounted as high as possible so maybe they got a better vies of the satellites. They did not depend upon the signals to get through wood, fiberglass, metals overhead, and so on.

Anyways just a thought.

 

[Capt. Rodbone]

Navionics/IPAD issues

OP here. The more I think about this the more I think it’s some interference coming on my vessel.I look forward to testing that theory by having our friends take and run same route on my newer and more used for navigation IPAD one their boat alongside of theirs. If my unit with them has issues and theirs doesn’t, that points to a problem with mine, PLUS rules out interference from somewhere on my boat being the culprit. If it runs without the issue, but we still have the issue on the one running on our boat, then it points to interference from my boat. Remember I have already made sure all our devices have the same settings as theirs, which never gives them a problem.
If it points to an issue on my boat, it hit me last night that not only could my old chart plotter be a problem, but potentially my SIMRAD autopilot as well. If I had to bet, both, we’re installed now later than 2002 based on what I know about the boat’s history. Both of course “ triangulate” to work. I think that’s the term for getting their fix.I’ll be able to rule one or both out by turning them off separately and assessing.

 

[Hippocampus]

Do believe iPad and non iPad devices have the same type of gps recievers. The OP issue is extremely unlikely to have anything to do with which brand of pad he is using. As stated before if it has to do with the reception and signal strength from the gps satellites his problem might be solved by an external gps antenna. Although with the MFD I can get a lat/long with as few as 3 or 4 satellites but of course the more satellites over the horizon and you’re locked on to the better.
The gps device in any phone or pad regardless of brand is low power and space limited. Those restrictions don’t apply to the same degree so I believe external gps hockey pucks are more sensitive and give more reliable data.
When I was voyaging although we had three MFDs all with their own internal gps we used none of them. Picked one as a master which was connected to an external hockey puck mounted with an unobstructed sky view. Also had a second hockey puck should the first fail.
Same with everything else. AIS with its own hockey puck and antenna with no splitter for VHF.
Friends have a mix of MFDs and nav computers. They use separate external hockey pucks for each device to my knowledge as I see multiple hockey pucks scattered around. Voyaging the goal is redundancy. Now coastal it seems less imperative so do get by with the internal gps in the iPads. I do run Aquamaps and navionics without difficulty on the IPads.
You can take this to extremes and install two separate 2000 backbones and duplicate sensors to those functions you think are critical if you have multiples of screens.

To the OP- have you checked how many satellites your set up is receiving?

 

[jgwinks]

The term iPad is being used universally in this thread but I'm not sure if you really mean an actual Apple iPad or using the term generically as in calling all facial tissue "Kleenex". I don't i-anything, never have and probably never will. I use Android phones and tablets and have never had any of these problems. Apple products have thier strengths, but it seems to me navigation is not one of them. In this case they're 4 or 5 times the cost for an inferior product. A $150 Android will do the job much better.

 

[Hippocampus]

The term iPad is being used universally in this thread but I'm not sure if you really mean an actual Apple iPad or using the term generically as in calling all facial tissue "Kleenex". I don't i-anything, never have and probably never will. I use Android phones and tablets and have never had any of these problems. Apple products have thier strengths, but it seems to me navigation is not one of them. In this case they're 4 or 5 times the cost for an inferior product. A $150 Android will do the job much better.

Do you have any evidence to support this post?

In medicine we are taught to not accept case reports as evidence. Case reports maybe intriguing enough to justify a study but that’s it. A list of single events is too contaminated by chance, bias and confounders as to draw any firm conclusions. Here you are saying iPads have trouble with nav and androids don’t. You offer absolutely no evidence to support this statement. You offer no reason as to why this should be.

Once you get out of North America (US and Canada) Apple products become rare. Android dominates. From the little information I have (case reports) android products have more not less troubles. The above statement is meaningless however possibly due to there being more android products. I would think (don’t know) that rec trawler owners aren’t dirt poor. Would think that may produce a higher percentage of Apple products hence greater likelihood of the OPs report involving a IPad. I don’t mean to come down on you but I’m so tired of people making the assumption that their personal experience can be extrapolated into a general statement.

 

[jgwinks]

Anecdotal, but there are lots of discussions about iPad problems like this one, that appear to be specific to iPad. Not for Android. I don't use iPads because my Androids do everything I need them to at a fraction of the cost. Do iPads still have the problem with limited number of waypoints making the Navionics auto route function inoperable? That's an absolute disqualifier right there if you want to use that function. Android does not limit waypoints so auto route works fine. This thread is about the iPad gps cutting out, I don't know of an android would do the same in those specific circumstances on those specific boats, but I've never heard of it happening.
Apple and iPad may do some applications better than PC or Android. If you need to do those applications then by all means use those products. If not, Android or PC will serve you better. I just get a tired of companies using the "ours costs more so it must be better" ploy, when at least for what I need it to do it's not any better and maybe not as good.

 

[PMF1984]

Just another variable to throw in… an iPad with cellular capability comes in various models. They are not all the same. Older models are slower and running all the features of AquaMap Master at the same time can choke an older model. (It always happened to me when I was in a narrow, winding channel)

An iPad Pro will handle any computing load, but the poor performance of the GPS chip in this model has been discussed at length in various discussion groups.

 

[Hippocampus]

Have had no issue with autoroute. Have done Ri to SC/GA Fl laying out autoroute for the entire transit. When using Aquamaps or navionics on the IPad will generally do ~ hundred mile legs at one time. Then go back and move waypoints as I modify the path. Don’t trust autoroute on anything be it TZ, C-MAP, navionics or whatever. Never follow an autoroute using it only as a suggestion. I similarly only do ~100m legs on the Simrads. Find I don’t miss stuff reviewing the shorter distances and piecing them together. Find I like to take a break between reviewing each leg. Perhaps doing longer leg distances it would be relevant if doing great circle courses but I’m coastal now. So as the mathematicians say “true, true and unrelated “. In this case “maybe true, possibly true, irrelevant”.
Agree your mileage may differ but but find the iPad operating system easier to work with and a bit more durable a device in a marine environment. Just would restate until we know assuming this has to do with it being due to it being a iPad seems unjustified. As the OP sorts this out time will tell. From his description to date seems unlikely. OP might want to investigate links below if concern is the signal.

https://ipadpilotnews.com/2021/08/should-pilots-buy-ipad-with-built-in-gps/

https://www.amazon.com/Garmin-GLO-B...fos.f5122f16-c3e8-4386-bf32-63e904010ad0&th=1

https://www.technobezz.com/android-gps-accuracy-problems/
Apparently android devices have their gps troubles as well.

Seems this is like a Fix Or Repair Daily v Goes Maybe argument.

 

[Capt. Rodbone]

Response from OP

I just clicked on the first two links. The prior contributor shared those prompting my wanting to share a bit more information as the OP.
If you click on the latter of the two links he shares, you will see an item at Amazon called the Glo 2 Glonass. I had previously failed to share that I bought one of these. I’ve used it once, but just as a way to get an Internet signal to an alternate iPad. We have one that does not have cellular, and I wanted to run Aqua Map’s on one unit and Navionics on the other. We did that once, and it met that need, but subsequent to that I learned from another boater these Canadian waters shown on Aqua Map’s lack detail available through Aqua Maps in the states. Those mostly have to do with available data regarding deaths and how updated that information is. In Canada I understand, you can basically just see the chart as a nautical chart looks. The one time we used it in that manner we were not getting this intermittently failing signal so I could neither evaluate an older iPad with a external GPS against my newer iPad with cellular and GPS, nor aqua maps versus Navionics.
It’s not the ideal approach, but if my experiment with our friend's taking the iPad of ours, which has already been determined to be on the exact same settings, and the exact same model as theirs, on their boat, and If that iPad doesn’t have the issue while with them, it points to some type of interference from something on our boat, which I mentioned yesterday as maybe the culprit. Then in addition to increasing my use of current paper charts and fix and dead reckoning there, I will just use Aqua Maps as opposed to Navionics. Old aqua, Mabs charts aren’t ideal, but rocks don’t move. Certainly, however, channel markers might so heightened awareness is necessary.
I will be shocked if my iPad misbehaves on their boat and here’s why. When it happens on ours, it happens on all of our devices. We have the program running on all at the same time. And that has me thinking there’s more credence to my concern about electronic interference from other devices on our boat. If the friend boat iPad experiment goes as I suspect, my next step will be to run for a while without the autopilot on and assess. If the problem still exists, I turn it back on and run the chart plotter. If it STILL exists, then, I turn both off and see.

At that point if nothing is clear maybe I buy an RV?!
Do we agree that if a breaker is off to either an autopilot or a chart plotter, Theo’s no way it’s trying to triangulate?

 

[C lectric]

+++++++At that point if nothing is clear maybe I buy an RV��!
Do we agree that if a breaker is off to either an autopilot or a chart plotter, Theo’s no way it’s trying to triangulate?++++++++

If the breaker is off then the devices cannot get power so there will be no electronics activity.

There was an old trick I had almost forgotten about and that is to use a radio to detect static interference. The radio must be an old one with the dial to move the tuner type.
If there is a lot of static radiation from other devices they would react with lots of static noise from the speaker.

They were usually cheapies without a lot of filtering so the locally caused static would cause a noisy signal. It may take asking an older radio repair guy about this.

I have seen some shops, used stuff, but also older electronics specialty shops that sell older radios. It might be worth asking there also.

 

[Capt. Rodbone]

Thanks!

I enjoy going into the type places that might have one so worth a try.

 

[Capt. Rodbone]

Headway to report from the OP

We and our friends decided mid afternoon to go ahead and make some headway today in anticipation of stronger winds tomorrow. As mentioned previously as a planned experiment I started the route on my newest iPad, and gave it to them to monitor on their boat alongside their iPad for the three hour voyage. They experienced the same issues I’ve been having, while we experienced none with our other iPad paired with the Garmin Glossnass 2 as its GPS source.
On our next travel day, I plan to take my IPAD used on this trip and pair it with the Garmin device and I suspect it will run just fine.
I think bottom line, neither of our Apple iPads, have a strong enough GPS to consistently get a fix. A post a few days ago said he had similar issues and this solve his problem.
We will likely travel again on Monday and if so, I will report back.
As always, I thank all of you folks with this forum who take the time to be of assistance.

 

[C lectric]

Good show.
The Ipads and my Samsungs have tiny gps receivers compared to the external antennae of installed GPS, not portable units.
It does not take much interference to cause trouble.

Good enough if there is little overhead interference. Now you know.