ADS-B receiver compatibility

[ragwing]

Hello all, New iFly subscriber here.
Am looking for portable ADS-B receiver recommendations.
Am in process of purchasing a plane that comes with a 740b.
I'l also be using my iPhone with iFly.
May decide on an iPad later.
Will the Foreflight Sentry Mini connect with my equipment?
Second question: If I do spring for a used iPad mini which model and storage capacity should I look for?
Thanks,
ragwing

 

[MDreger]

I built a Stratux, with an "X" originally a DIY project based on a Raspberry Pi mini computer, and various add on parts and software. http://stratux.me/ They've been around for probably 10 years or so. I never had any problem with it, and have heard of many people that have used this product/project with little or no problems. There are, or were, several commercial products based on this same basic product. It would seem this would be the cheapest way to go. I stopped using mine because we equipped our club plane with a Stratus, with an "S"

The only problem with the Stratus is that it was originally designed to be used only with ForeFlight. The Stratus3 that we have is the first available that can be used by other products, but you have to "flip a switch" in the App to enable "Open ADSB Mode". It stays in that mode for as long as no one else connects an iPad with ForeFlight, if that happens the Stratus3 will automatically switch back and turn the Open ADSB Mode off. I think there is, or is going to be a Stratus4 that may or may not have this "problem".

There are plenty of other ADSB out products out there that work with iFly, but I don't have any personal experience with them.

I don't know much about iPads, other than I've got a years old iPad Mini4, and it seems to work fine.

 

[Cobra]

I think the original Stratus (v1) can be used with iFly, but there may be a caveat that it has to be running an early firmware version. I don't know how many of those original devices are still in use these days.

As MDreger said, the Stratus 3 can work with iFly, with the caveats he described about keeping it in "Open ADSB Mode".

As far as I know, the Stratus Mini only works with Foreflight.

There is a long list of other devices that are compatible with iFly (and some other devices not listed work also because to iFly they look like one of the supported devices in the list):


Like MDreger, I use a DIY Stratux box. It's served me well now for almost 10 years.