which gps receiver is working on iPad mini

That was a great review (at your link) and Brett's info is great too! The battery problem with the Garmin I knew about , and is a big deal for me, though I have a handheld gps for hiking , it would be a real problem to be hiking for more than one day and find the battery is dead. It would be nice if these could use AAA batteries, maybe plug into a battery pack for a recharage?

I wonder if the problem with the accuracy with these showing you on a roof while the internal gps showed you on a street reflects the software and not the gps? (I read somewhere that gps for cars adjusts whatever location it gives to show that you are on the road, even if the actual reading says otherwise )

I will probably get the Pro, but have to look at Dual's somemore.

Re your comment about one gps saying you're "On the roof" vs another "on the street."

Not sure if you mean elevation or lateral position, but GPS is NOTORIOUSLY BAD at measuring elevation. My Bad Elf, once it gets stabilized and tracking 7-8 satellites, will give me a steady consistent horizontal position within a 12-15 ft circle. But, at the same time, the elevation reading will fluctuate up and down by 50 to 100+ feet over a few minutes time. I have read that it's typical and inherent in the system. I'm not sure why. I have a Buddy who flies a Biz Jet for a living and he said his plane has a super accurate gps that's accurate enough to do an instrument landing with as far as lateral location but they never trust the gps for altitude, use a radar altimeter instead.

I was assuming he mean't lateral position, but now that you point it out I am not sure, since he used the word roof vs. building. That would imply he looked at both the location and elevation? Still I suppose the software could explain even that , as navigation software for cars would assume you are not only over the road, but on it?

I think users of car navigation gps aren't aware of this, except maybe when pulling into a driveway, but hikers notice this, as I did just walking around downtown. Some hiker type GPSs have an option to do street navigation. I searched for something on this, that might be more convincing, read here, Garmin calls it lock on.

I have read that GPS is bad at elevation, from what I have read it has to do with the model of the earth it uses, but more because the triangluation isn't very good since all the satellites are very high, at least for hikers, not sure about pilots who could get more of them on the horizon, or maybe WAAS etc. A scene in the movie Enemy of the state explained this pretty well, when one guy complained about the satellite not being able to take a picture of a guys face, if he wasn't looking up. The other guy said maybe you could invent a new one!

Here is his link that he posted above:

Quote:

Hi Brett,

Do you have any idea if the iPod attachment works with dash cam apps in particular one called iSymDVR 2?

Thanks!

Wayne243

Hi Wayne243,

We have some customers that use our GPS accessories with track video/lap recorders, which are pretty similar. I haven't heard of iSymDVR 2 specifically but after a quick review of the app listing I think it should work just fine. They list the iPod touch which is always a good sign for the app to be able to run on non-cellular iOS devices.

I hope that helps!

-Brett

Appreciate that Brett. Thanks for your help!

Wayne

for what its worth: i bought a bad elf gps for lightning connector, for use with my wifi-only ipad air. of all the silly gizmos ive bought for my ipad, this was NOT one of them.

i havent the foggiest how it operates or what all the technical commentary means, but it works exactly as advertized. load an app from the apple site ... plug the bad elf in the lightning connector, run the app ... and you're away to the races, with the usual gps provisos about not working in downtown areas where youre surrounded by tall buildings, or in heavily treed zones..

i got it not through the company website, but from a distributor in toronto.

if you want gps capability without the cost of a data plan, this is the ticket.

a slight word of caution: the bad elf sticks out a little bit, so you have to be careful you dont break it off. not a big deal but something to watch out for.

I have had a bad elf for a while, with a subscription to off maps. Works like a charm every where I have gone.

Alas, mine is the 30 pin connector, and won't work with my air. ( anybody want it?).

But to Samos point, the thong works good.

Hi pjl123,

Glad to hear you've enjoyed your 30-pin Bad Elf. Just FYI you can get Apple's Lightning-to-30pin adapter that will let you use it with your iPad Air. There are 2 versions -- one is a dongle, and the other is on a 6" cable -- I'd recommend the latter.

Take care,

Brett

Hi Samos3,

Our slogan is "Engineering Magic" for good reason ... glad to hear you're happy with your Bad Elf!

Best regards,

Brett

I got the bad elf pro , it has worked well with my fitness apps, and gala maps. It displays are easy to understand and show important info better than my Garmin hand held. The accuracy of the two seems about the same after just using it for biking around town. I am glaid it displays your location, I could not tell for sure at Shorty's , I see it does say this on bad elf's website. I wish it would also so UTM position, but I don't think Gala maps uses UTM, just Lat / Lon so not that important.

I wonder how battery consumption compares for an iPad mini wifi only with this GPS and an iPad mini with GPS (internal). ie does the blue tooth connection and the other position fixing (looking at Wifi spots etc.) use more of the iPad battery than an internal GPS.

Glad to hear the GPS Pro is working well for you!

We've been meaning to re-run the internal vs. bluetooth battery comparison tests again for the iPad Air and iPad mini (with and without Retina). I know that for our device, the GPS consumes WAY more power than Bluetooth. For example, on the bench the GPS Pro lasts ~28hrs when streaming GPS data to 2 iPads. In datalogger mode with Bluetooth OFF we get ~32hrs.

But of course iPad screen brightness seems to have the biggest effect on battery life so there are a lot of variables when using it in real world conditions.

When we get around to re-running some benchmarks I'll post the results here.

Best regards,

-Brett

can u help me on how to use offline maps on iPad mini with retina display wifi only, with garmin glo gps

The Axxera Bluetooth GPS Receiver works great with iPads that only have wifi.

Has anyone tried the Dual Electronics GPS for iPad? It's now the highest rated iPad solution on Amazon.