When your primary GPS chart plotter goes south, what are ya gonna do?
On a recent trip I lost GPS satelite connectivity (or it was scrambled?) with my trusty old Garmin chartplotter, yet the depth sounder continued to work fine. Yes, it's over 10 years old and needs to be replaced. It got me thinking that I don't have a true backup system, other than what I have on my iPhone running iNavX or paper charts. I also have Strava, or Avenza, or GAIA for GPS location data. Okay, so I do have a lot of options.
Luckily, my GPS seems to be working fine again, so maybe I can milk another year or two out of it? Time will tell.
In the meantime I learned that I can leverage the larger screen on my wifi-only iPad Air 2 with a Bluetooth capable, third-party GPS receiver. My iPad has no native GPS capability, but there are a number of add-on GPS options. I' picked up a Bad Elf GPS Pro Bluetooth as it integrates well on the iPad, and it's been doing so for close to 10 years! Bad Elf was the company behind the original GPS integration on early (2010) Apple iOS products. This combo will give me a large screen, mobility, low power consumption, redundancy and simplicity.
The Bad Elf GPS Pro unit charges via USB, and has a self-contained power supply. Like the iPad and iPhone, it does not consume a lot of on-board power. The GPS Pro provides a battery life of up to 16 hours when connected to your iOS device via Bluetooth, and supports a GPS reporting rate of 10 times per second . With the GPS Pro in standalone datalogger mode and Bluetooth turned off, you can expect a battery life of up to 32 hours.
GPS accuracy is 9ft (2.5m) which should be fine for my requirements. It requires no cell service, no internet connection and no monthly subscription.
I'm sure there will be a learning curve but the apps that support iPad and Bad Elf integration are vast. I think it will be an excellent solution as a backup system. Maybe I'll build out the Rasberry Pi solution next winter.
Related links:
- Bad Elf website
- Bad Elf GPS Pro Detail
- Bad Elf GPS Pro App
- Bad Elf GPS Pro Review
- Buy a Bad Elf Pro for $139
Apps that integrate with the Bad Elf GPS Pro:
- Boat Beacon
- Charts & Tides
- C-Map Embark: Boating
- iBoating - Marine/Nautical Charts
- iNavX Marine Navigation
- iRegatta Pro
- Maptech iPlot
- Imray Navigator
- Navionics
- OnCourse - boating & sailing nav(mAIS)
- SafeAnchor
- SCraMP
- SeaNav
- Seapilot
- Sky Based Weather Navigator
- TZ iBoat – Marine Navigation
- Wärtsilä iSailor
The alternative is Raspberry Pi and OpenCPN and it's myriad ways to integrate chartplotting, weather, AIS, VHF, and much more. Next year!
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