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What 7" tablet has good internal GPS?

I keep Avare updated constantly on my 2013 Nexus 7 since I've got a very fast WiFi internet feed at the office, but my biggest beef with it is that when you enter a flight plan and scroll along the course line, the display jumps around erratically and the screen keeps going black. Also, whenever I enter a flight plan going eastbound, it keeps randomly loosing the final airport destination and instead, the magenta line goes off into la-la land, usually ending up somewhere veering off to the southeast and going off into the Atlantic ocean somewhere completely off the maps. Because of that behavior, I don't think it's ready to use in the air yet. Yeah, it's free and has some very useful features, but I still consider it to be in the "academic curiosity" category for now.
 
Recommend going to the website (google Avare) and they have a Google Groups forum that would let you provide this useful feedback. I have for various things and usually there's an update to the software relatively quickly. Most people haven't seen your issue, but if the dev can recreate it they will fix it relatively promptly...he flies with it personally, so I'm sure he would want to clean up an issue.

Neal@F14 said:
I keep Avare updated constantly on my 2013 Nexus 7 since I've got a very fast WiFi internet feed at the office, but my biggest beef with it is that when you enter a flight plan and scroll along the course line, the display jumps around erratically and the screen keeps going black. Also, whenever I enter a flight plan going eastbound, it keeps randomly loosing the final airport destination and instead, the magenta line goes off into la-la land, usually ending up somewhere veering off to the southeast and going off into the Atlantic ocean somewhere completely off the maps. Because of that behavior, I don't think it's ready to use in the air yet. Yeah, it's free and has some very useful features, but I still consider it to be in the "academic curiosity" category for now.
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I have something that may be of interest regarding GPS reception. As I've said before, my 2012 Nexus 7 has provided excellent GPS performance from day one. It aquires very quickly and has been superbly accurate.

Until I dropped it yesterday.

I didn't see the impact with the ground, from about four feet, but it sounded pretty harsh. On initial inspection it looked fine and woke up normally. Since its primary function is as an EFB/navigation device, and Murphy is my wingman, I immediately fired up one of the installed navigation apps to check the GPS. No workie! No GPS with any app, this was not good Mav...

I lives in a Supcase which has worked out very well, but closer visual inspection revealed a little ding on the upper right corner of the device, where it's relatively unprotected by the case. (Murphy = wingman, remember?) I'm thinking at this point that the impact must have broken the dilithium crystal that powers the GPS, or something along those lines...

When I got home I downloaded a small app called GPS Test. The app indicates what satellites the device can see, which ones it's using for a solution and the Signal to Noise Ratio of each one. Handy. The tablet could see several satellites, but wasn't using any due to poor reception. This was actually encouraging as it meant that the GPS chip was working, so the problem must be the antenna somehow loosened by the impact with terra firma. That's probably easier to fix than a dilithium crystal.

A quick check of Google verified that the case back can be removed for service, and quite simply. So I popped the back off and discovered that the GPS lives in the corner of the tablet that hit the ground, and the antenna is bonded to the back cover. There are two bent spring contacts to make the connection when the case back is installed. Assuming that they had suffered from the impact, I carefully bent these to put more spring pressure on the antenna side contacts and put the cover back on.

It worked. I ran the GPS test and immediately had a handful of satellites acquired. I started Garmin Pilot and all appeared to be normal. I tested it in the car today on the way to work and so far so good, it seemed to work normally. I?ll have to get it in the air, but I think I may have dodged a bullet!
 
I've gotta get me that app. :) I've been looking for one that lets me see the satellite status like I can on my Garmin panel-mount GPS.
 
Avare

I loaded Avare on my Samsung Note 2 and it worked great. Now I won't worry about no updates on my Lowarance.
 
I'll have to check that out! I've always thought a slightly larger screen on the Nexus 7 would be great...so basically the 8.

Avare will also show how many satellites it sees if you want that info...

Snowflake said:
Oh, and just reported today, Google will have a Nexus 8 later this summer...
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I do GPS signal integrity stuff day in and day out at work, and we've found that ALL portable equipment (cell phones, tablets, laptops) with internal antennas universally have very low quality antennas. The chips themselves (Broadcom, Qualcomm, SIRF, etc) are very capable devices, but putting a cruddy antenna on them dumbs them down quite a bit -- there's no room! GPS solution quality is a strong function on how the device is oriented and what sort of shielding it gets in the cockpit -- the chips make a crappy antenna acceptable.

My money's on a good quality puck mounted on top of the fuse ... with a good ground plane for best performance.

Same stuff happens if you have a poor quality or poorly mounted comm antenna ... but at least it's easy to hear the drop in quality.
 
Handheld devices seem to perform better than average under the glass bubble of the RV canopy. Even sitting on my thigh, my iPad and my wife's Nexus 7 get great GPS reception. And velcroed to my panel, my Nexus 5 phone gets great reception despite being up against an aluminum plate and under an aluminum glareshield.

Just one man's opinion, of course... :)
 
I'll have to agree with Rob on this one, based on personal experience. I'll rate my current GPS devices with respect to their ability to dig a signal out of the dirt and hang onto a fix.

Rating scale is Worst Performance to Best Performance
1) Garmin 396
2) Garmin eTrex
3) Lowrance 2000c
4) Nexus 7 (original version)
5) GRT Mini-X EFIS

How do I measure this performance? All of them work well in the airplane except the Garmin 396 which sometimes will lose lock and sometimes takes a fair bit of time to acquire satellites. It will NOT work anywhere in our home. The eTrex builds on the 396 experience by working inside our house, if you're standing next to a window. The Lowrance goes a step further by working on the kitchen table. The Nexus trumps this by getting a position fix when standing in the middle of the ground floor of our 2-story house. Now for the kicker... the GRT Mini-X GPS receiver gets a solid position.. IN OUR BASEMENT. Nothing else even gets a whiff of satellite lock down there.
 
32 gig needed for all the charts

markscogg said:
Is the 16 GB version big enough to load apps and charts? Really only need the south eastern US.
Click to expand...

No, get the 32gig model. I have 16gig Samsung and I cannot download the whole USA. Course I don't need the whole USA. I currently download only three states. That plus the normal other stuff and my Samsung 16g tablet is half full. I've got 8gigs remaining. When I download all the maps to go to Oshkosh, I get close to 10gigs.

So, if I could do it again (and I will someday) get the extra and buy 32 gig model.

PS, oh I'm using Garmin Pilot and I pay full subscription for IFR and my download includes everything: Sectionals, WACs, Plates, Enroute (low & hi), airport data and taxi data.



have fun.
 
A question about the Ipad mini to you guys-Rv8 flyers primarily, Does the newer ipads have better brightness than the original mini? I love foreflight but cant see a darn thing on the mini I have while flying the rv8. I dont have an anti glare screen protector on it and Im not wearing sunglasses. I thought upgrading to the latest Ipad might make it usable in the rv8 cockpit. Oh, and its standard vans bubble and no koger shade.
Thanks
 
Should a antiglare screen protector be added to the ipad mini 4 for additional viewability or does that affect brightness?
 
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