ForeFlight Sentry

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Scott Brewer

Filing Flight Plan
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Jan 2, 2023
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Scott Brewer
Do any of you Sentry ADS-B receiver users have a problem with the receiver constantly disconnecting from your tablet? I fly primarily in the West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania area and have a major problem with the receiver disconnecting from my iPad mini numerous times during flight. To reconnect requires turning the receiver off, restarting, closing ForeFlight, opening iPad settings, connecting to Sentry, and then back to ForeFlight maps. Safe to say, this is extremely inconvenient, especially when practicing instrument approaches. I’ve spoken with Uavionics and their solution was to make sure any other devices in the cockpit were shut down, which hasn’t helped. I have zero confidence in flying with the Sentry because I can’t depend on it staying connected. It’s become useless to me. Any suggestions on how to fix this issue are appreciated.
 
I had a similar problem with my Scout, my solution was to get a GDL39.
 
They told me to turn on airplane mode then reenable wifi. This worked for the most part.

My ahrs is still all drifty thought.

Mostly my suggestion would still be to get another device.
 
I've also had that problem with the Sentry. I usually just have to turn the unit itself off and on, but yes, that's stupid and ruins an otherwise great unit.
 
I've never had this problem with my Sentry. I'm sure you've already done this but make sure your ipad is set with Sentry as the wifi source. I know--duh? o_O
 
Yup. Have had it happen repeatedly. So much so that it is currently back with uAvionics to be checked out.

Will most likely get rid of it when we get it back. We don’t trust it.
 
We were also looking at the tailbeaconX a while back. All the shops were pretty dismissive. Don’t know if there’s something they know about the company we don’t.
 
Archer Jack said:
sure your ipad
Click to expand...
On a long cross country flight today the Sentry disconnected from Foreflight twice. It's happened before. I can see no pattern to when it decides to fall offline. In the iPad settings, the Sentry was still shown as the WiFi source, so the device was still online. This makes me think it's a linkage problem to Foreflight, but since Foreflight and Sentry are from the same company, that would be unexpected. At any rate, power cycling the Sentry solved the problem each time. This was a very unwelcome distraction as I navigated in busy airspace, heads down trying to diagnose the problem.

Foreflight QA must certainly have been able to reproduce the bug given each piece is a part of a Foreflight hardware / software offering. At a minimum, I hope they root cause the problem and tell us what it is so we can at least know when to expect these failures and devise our own workarounds.

Bottom line is that I was hoping to sell my old Stratus as I like the CO detector in the Sentry as well as its size, but I worry about the distraction of the Sentry falling offline on a georeferenced approach where I certainly won't want the distraction of power cycling it. Never had this issue with the Stratus.
 
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kgorey said:
On a long cross country flight today the Sentry disconnected from Foreflight twice. It's happened before. I can see no pattern to when it decides to fall offline. In the iPad settings, the Sentry was still shown as the WiFi source, so the device was still online. This makes me think it's a linkage problem to Foreflight, but since Foreflight and Sentry are from the same company, that would be unexpected. At any rate, power cycling the Sentry solved the problem each time. This was a very unwelcome distraction as I navigated in busy airspace, heads down trying to diagnose the problem.

Foreflight QA must certainly have been able to reproduce the bug given each piece is a part of a Foreflight hardware / software offering. At a minimum, I hope they root cause the problem and tell us what it is so we can at least know when to expect these failures and devise our own workarounds.

Bottom line is that I was hoping to sell my old Stratus as I like the CO detector in the Sentry as well as its size, but I worry about the distraction of the Sentry falling offline on a georeferenced approach where I certainly won't want the distraction of power cycling it. Never had this issue with the Stratus.
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Get another CO2 detector. Sentry just shows something on foreflight and change a light. I personally feel better with a detector you can hear.
 
SebIp said:
Get another CO2 detector. Sentry just shows something on foreflight and change a light. I personally feel better with a detector you can hear.
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The Sentry has an audible alarm in addition to the light and the iPad message.

Although I have had the same problems as others with it randomly disconnecting in flight. Too bad, I think it's otherwise a great product.
 
My Scout would disconnect 1-2 times an hour. Gave up and bought a Sentry Mini. Better, now only once every couple of flights. I moved its mounting position to have a more direct line-of-sight to my iPad. My seat shells are carbon fiber, and I thought that they might be interfering with the WiFi signal.
 
I must be lucky since I’ve had no issues. A friend also mentioned the same disconnection issue with his.

Did support have you run diagnostics or download its logs or whatever?
 
There's been a new Sentry firmware update recently. Maybe that would help. It changed a feature in the AHRS display that had been troublesome for me.
 
I've had similar issues with my Sentry, even had the unit replaced. I think the unit's Wifi is not very well shielded from interference and cross-talk. My disconnects happened over towns (that obviously broadcast wifi signals) so I think that had something to do with it. Also support suggested to turn off bluetooth on the iPad. It's been *much* better since. Keep your firmware updated also, they definitely know about this issue so hopefully they're addressing this.
 
Spent quality time with the Foreflight support team. Uploaded device logs. If I read the log entries correctly, the AHRS unit falls offline and there's a failure cascade that follows. Then they wanted more detailed logs on a flight where the unit failed. I don't want to compromise flight safety to debug the unit, so decided to return it. Sporty's was very standup and is swapping out the unit, but if you're right it won't make a difference.

The Sentry is a good product concept and Foreflight is a good company. I'm surprised that the quality issues.
 
Sounds about right the AHRS on mine never worked well. I am getting rid of it and replacing with something else. Too bad its got decent features.
 
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