Bad Elf GPS

I've had it for years. I keep it in my Jeep, connected to my LiFePO4 off grid power system. Folks who are in my Jeep are welcome to pair to it. It blows Apple GPS out of the water because no cell tower dependancy!

Thanks BadElf!

Functional and free of gimmicks.

The little Bad Elf and its app rated here have always done everything I’ve expected. Other than Bad Elf, the only better way to get GPS data is to buy a device - iPad in my case - costing hundreds more. ForeFlight and the various astronomy apps have limited utility without precise positioning. The BadElf app is at least a convenient trackline & elevation logger, and is also a functional mapping utility. APPLE: why are you pushing a rating for this app that is over *nine years* old? If I were the dev, I’d be furious.

I really don’t have any issues, it works well for driving, connects faithfully to both my iPhone and iPad. My only concern is I worry about iOs support. Since this apps last update was years ago.

crashes on iOS 13.2 when launching

Also still using archaic Mini-B usb. Come on Bad Elf you can do better.

I find the app to be very difficult to download field data to the computer.

This app does a decent job of complementing the Bad Elf receiver, but it fails in a few key areas. Pros: 1) Easy to download tracks 2) Easy to clear up space by deleting downloaded tracks (when downloaded or at a later time) 3) Good view of the device's features, e.g. satellites in view Cons: 1) The big one: the app often displays stale data that doesn't reflect the up-to-date state of the receiver. This would be just an annoyance, except that it also means that sometimes the controls don't work, i.e. turning on the track log looks like it works but actually leaves the recorder off. Apparently this is because the app doesn't really have an active connection to the receiver, but it acts like it does and pretends to turn on track logging. I've lost at least half a dozen recordings that were never started due to this bug. The receiver panel needs to be fixed to only show real data, not cached or stale data. 2) Some of the app workflow doesn't make much sense. For example, why is the Satellites page at the main level instead of at the device level page? It apparently shows the satellite status for a single device.

My one request for the app would be that it shouldn't force you to redownload all the trips on the BadElf if you have previously deleted some of them from the app. It can take a long time for my trips to download since they are often as much as ten hours long! Making me do that with several trips is a major pain. I have learned to never delete a trip from the app if it is still on the Elf, but that is not a solution, merely a workaround.