Bad Elf Pro, the perfect iPad GPS (& logger too)?

It’s amazing how small, fast, and precise GPS has gotten. I’m not saying that those accuracy figures seen on the Bad Elf GPS Pro are absolutely true — without a physical reference point, a GPS can only estimate its own positional precision, right? — but I have seen some very impressive real world performance. Plus this Bluetooth Elf can do much more than simply feed position data to iPads, Touch iPods, and iPhones (up to five at once). It can serve as a standalone GPS with lat/long, COG, SOG,  and altitude also displayable on that small but readable screen, and it can log up to 32 hours of detailed track data which is easy to make use of on your iThing and beyond…

I found the three-button control interface on the Bad Elf Pro quite easy to use and remember. The power/backlight and Bluetooth on/off  buttons are obvious, and come with screen confirmations, while pushing the GPS button pages through available screens. A long push on GPS first turns data logging on, and then gives you the choice of saving a POI or turning logging off with a second long push…

It was easy to pair the Bad Elf Pro with my iPad, and also with the iPad3 Garmin loaned me to test BlueChart Mobile, and all the mapping and charting apps I tried with it were able to use its GPS data fine. (No surprise there as Apple iOS is great about distributing core location info.) But a lot of the Pro’s magic is in the free Bad Elf GPS utility app you can use with it…

With the app you can get the same position and status information as we saw on the Pro’s little display, but in a much bigger format, and colorful too. And note that as nice as Apple iOS is about distributing GPS position info to all apps, it does not seem capable of sharing accuracy and satellites-in-use detail for the GPS built into some iPads (which also cost more with the GPS). Note also that the same screens above work with the original Bad Elf 1000 dongle-style GPS Receiver, which I tested alongside the Dual XPS Bluetooth GPS. But neither of those can work independently and/or collect track data, which I consider a huge plus for the Pro model…

What’s particularly neat is how easily you can access and manage your track data from the iThing app. The left-hand screen above shows all the logged Trips currently on my test Bad Elf Pro, all but one of which has been copied over to the iPad (one-button-push easy to do). And the Pro’s generous memory isn’t even half full yet, though the particular 11 hour track shown on the individual Trip screen has nearly 29,000 data points!…

The Bad Elf app will also summarize Trip Details and thus you can see how fast and high I traveled during that 11/3 tracking session. (Have you ever seen a GPS maintain WAAS lock while tucked in a plane’s middle seat back pocket? That’s what I mean by impressive performance.)  Overlaid on the details screen are a couple of the dialog boxes you get to when you hit Share on a Trip’s main screen. Actually the “Open KML {or GPX} in Other App” weren’t there when I started testing the Bad Pro in October…

When I updated the Bad Elf app yesterday I not only discovered that it can now flip log data over to many of the mapping and charting apps on my pad but that the logger itself got a firmware update (again one-button-easy to install) that includes log filtering and the ability to bump the refresh rate up to 10 times a second. Wow! That means that my 29,000 point track could have been a lot smaller — if I’d set a Smart Filter to skip points when stopped — and yet even more accurate at high speed if I’d increased the Hz above the default once per second…

Now, the new “Open xxx in app” feature does not yet work with all my apps, especially the GPX flavor, but frankly I didn’t even know that was possible on an iPad (especially my old original model). And darned if Transas iSailor didn’t import that giant Myrtle-to-Camden track without a hiccup. That’s last part of the automobile section overlaid on the chart above along with short drive I logged at 10 Hz yesterday (they match nearly perfectly). Also note some of the Route, Track, and Alarm features iSailor has acquired in the last year. Nice!

Even the pre-update Bad Elf GPS app did a great job of emailing track files. Again it’s a one button command (plus specifying the recipient) but the automatic email includes all the Trip Detail info and has both GPX and KML files attached. The above screen shows what the PC version of Memory-Map can do with the GPX version of the big Myrtle-to-Camden file. Note the track point detail shown where I clicked on the track lower right, and also note that the accurate tracking in the terminal and on the road was all done with the Bad Elf in my shoulder bag. It’s an excellent GPS even without the extra capabilities.
   Finally, below is a screen showing the same track area as seen when I opened it to Google Earth on the iPad. It strikes me that the Bad Elf Pro — $130 on Amazon — is not only a superb iThing GPS but that it’s also a fascinating example of where some sensors may be headed. Just having your wireless apps device able to reliably receive GPS from a specialized and also wireless sensor (with a very long battery life) is great, but having it be the central display and management point for a tiny device that can collect data on its own is a whole other level.