A conversation with another member stimulated this question. How reliable is the iPhone/iPad gps when it's down in the confines of the cabin. My recollection from my initial use of a Mac onboard some years ago is many (most?) gps have problems receiving the satellite signals through the cabbie roof, thus resorting to careful placement of the gps antenna or a gps antenna mounted outside. Of course these are not practical with the iPhone/iPad. Has reception improved significantly? Myself, I have the wifi iPad and have a Digi-Connect ordered, as I already have external gps antennas for my ais and plotter, plus a backup Garmin handheld all wired in via nmea, so don't 'need' another gps, but I do get questions from others and like to give balanced, pragmatic responses.
Scot
Apples and Oranges comparing iPad 3G with iPhone 3Gs GPS. Former works very well (even down below in a cabin), the other not as good. Both use very different A-GPS chipsets. Hopefully iPhone 4 will be more comparable to iPad 3G.
How does the iPad or associated GPS software indicate the degree of confidence (or lack thereof) in signal strength and thus accuracy of fix?
-Paul
Canvasback
C&C 27
iNavX displays HPE: which is Horizontal Position error (a distance measurement). This value comes straight from the iPad operating system.
By comparison, iPad 3G typically reports 16 feet where iPhone 3Gs is 56 feet.
Any ideas about wireless interfacing with external GPS units such as the new Garmin GPSMAP 78 series. Garmin advertises the ability to transfer "?stuff?" between compatible units without much detail. Anyway, buried in there is the potential to send a wireless NMEA data stream to all listeners.