I am trying to trouble shoot a Bad Elf lightning gps. It would be helpful if CE displayed that it had a position lock.
Click on the POSN status indicator, it will show what is being used for position and the status of that fix
Build 43 should be available very soon and it includes some changes that will make this sort of troubleshooting easier and maybe less necessary!
For one thing, we fixed a problem that was preventing Coastal Explorer from getting the most accurate location possible from the iPhone/iPad location service. (The location service is what provides an application with the location of the device based on Wi-Fi, cellular, or internal GPS signals as well as compatible external GPS receivers.)
Coastal Explorer will now detect when the location services are providing a location with a low accuracy (probably greater than 10m off) and will show the POSN sensor panel in yellow. When location services are no longer providing a location, the POSN sensor will turn red. You can see what information the location services are providing Coastal Explorer, including an estimation of accuracy, by clicking on the POSN sensor panel and selecting Location Services.
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Garmin GLO can receive position information from both the GPS and GLONASS satellite constellations, allowing it to connect to up to 24 more satellites than devices that rely on GPS alone. It transmits GPS Fix to iPhone & iPad (and other devices) by Bluetooth, so you can accurately use Coastal Explorer – not relying on the inaccurate Mobile Tower Cellular Network to fix your position.
Having one fried my GPS from a failed, external voltage regulator (shooting 18v into everything aboard) I found that having an external GPS source to be invaluable.
Originally I played with a GlobalSat BU-353-S4 USB GPS Receiver with Open CPN - but it didn’t work with CE 4.0. Then tried Garmin 18x USB GPS Navigator Unit on my laptop - which provided fix on CE 4 for laptop as a stand-alone nav system (but still had to manually control auto-pilot for each leg of my route).
I can see that with CE for iPhone & iPad, the GLO will be real handy to have aboard (only $100 on Amazon) but I wonder if the GPS will get confused - having it’s own built-in fix, while simultaneously seeing the more accurate data from the GLO over the wireless network. Same question applies to CE 4.0; receiving GPS Bird Fix across NMEA 2000 network from GOS while simultaneously sensing the more accurate input from GLO over 802.11.
(Brad, please answer if you can… 
)
One thing is for sure, if it can break… Kafka will tap one on the shoulder at the worst possible time. Having a backup portable GPS aboard that can do emergency texting to the LEO Satellite Network can save your ship, and possibly your life.
Coastal Explorer can handle multiple position sensors and will use the highest priority sensor that currently has a fix. By default, positions coming from the operating system (location services) have a lower priority than positions coming from NMEA 0183 or NMEA 2000.
For devices like the Garmin GLO (or any other iPad/iPhone compatible GPS like the Bad Elf), Coastal Explorer can only get the device’s position from location services, but then the operating system is picking the ‘best’ location to provide which will come from the GPS when it is working.