Hey! There's no "I" in TEAM! I think "we" were right!! Weren't we talking about this and it was you that doubted it would work because you were worried the wifi would be dedicated to that Phantom? Which wouldn't leave any wifi for the tether?! And then one of us wise men mentioned Bluetooth?! [emoji12]
So... the story...
Synopsis: It works. You CAN tether your phone to your wifi only device with a Bluetooth connection for internet and still connect your RC to your wifi only device and have real time maps available as you fly.
Caveat: It was cold, so testing was hurried. During the time it took to set up and test connections, the battery was getting "warning level" cold.
Details: I chose to tether my phone and iPad
Mini 2 by Bluetooth first, then power everything else up and make the necessary links between the remote and my iPad... and that was a problem.
I had a hard time establishing a connection between the RC and iPad while the Bluetooth connection was established; in fact I couldn't do it at all. I knew I had done it (and flown) in my living room the night before so I knew it was possible... but then I started second guessing whether maybe my iPad was still connected to my home internet during the living room test...
But that didn't make sense, so I decided to start over and shut everything down, powered up the bird, then the RC, established a wifi connection as usual, THEN established a Bluetooth connection to my phone, and from that point forward everything was perfect.
In fact, during today's flight I was actually pleased that another test was successful; I did not have a single "inference" warning either!! This was the first flight since my upgrade to FW 1.8.1.
It gets even better... I remembered to perform a user-initiated Smart RTH, and exactly as the manual says, I had to toggle S2 exactly twice for it to activate. And return to home it did...
Everything was flawless after I established the Bluetooth connection LAST... and here is a screenshot to show that the map was active on a wifi only device without a cached map (this is the first time this iPad has ever been to this location and I have never cached a map of any kind).
Very happy with all this. I know maps can be cached but I do like the idea of live, real time maps being available any time.
Oh, and one more thing... even in the below zero temps, I still got 20+ minutes of flight time, the iPad still had 86% battery, and because I was able to leave my phone in the warmth of my pocket, even that only went from 76 to 70% battery! That has always been a problem. Below zero, my phone will not last an entire flight without a battery backup.
All around, complete success!!
Sent from my iPhone using
PhantomPilots