Sentry ADS-B Receiver for Weather and Traffic in ForeFlight with CO Monitor and 12hr Battery Life

I have owned this product for 5 months and it has not let me down once. Paired with foreflight, this item is priceless (Flying occurs in DA40, PA44 w/ G1000 & TAS)Flying in Phoenix, I have seen temperatures on the ground at 47 C and down to 0 C. I have used this device for every flight for the past 5 months and have not been let down once. The RAM mount has worked every time and has not left any damage like I have seen in other posts. On average, I use the sentry for 7 hours per day and only have to charge my device every 2-3 days. (Always great to keep an charging brick in case you forget)Backup AHRS- Paired with foreflight, the AHRS is incredibly helpful. Even with the base subscription, you will have the AHRS system on your iPad. With the higher versions, AHRS is paired with synthetic vision and traffic spotting on screen.Traffic Alerting & ADS-B- Flying in the mountainous terrain, I have never lost GPS, but have lost ADS-B tower reception between Yuma and Phoenix on a few occasions. Weather updates very frequently on its own, and the weather radar has proven to be very accurate in my experience. Flying between Phoenix and SoCal is uneventful weather wise, but the system also automatically updates and displays TFR's on foreflight as well.I have read multiple reviews about the CO detector not working, and this is far from true with my device. During a night flight the CO detector saved me and 2 other occupants in the aircraft. Having read reviews of people saying the CO detector is faulty, when it started warning of 75 PPM, we simply ignored the reading. (Relying on the aircrafts CO detector) After a few minutes, the device was reading 325 PPM, we turned back to the field. When we returned to the field, MX ops checked the aircraft and had a reading of 350 PPM.Overall, this product is highly reliable and worth every penny in my experience. The school I fly out of has a few stratus’s that they sign out, but this product has proven to do the same job, if not better for far less.

Took it up yesterday for the first time, super pleased with it! I’ve been use the Stratus line since inception at work, and always wanted one for personal flying. The lower price point without sacrificing features is outstanding. It comes with a nice case too, something the Stratus needs. It is very small and lightweight, great for keeping in your bag when you’re always changing planes. It’s super simple to stick on the window and fly. Great GPS reception, and ADS-B Locke’s up as soon as I was airborne (airport was in a valley, and depending on your area you usually need to be at least 500-1000’ up before you get a good signal since it’s line of sight and ground based). Extremely pleased to have the capabilities I’m used to while also saving money!

Pros: Small, lightweight, nice packaging, good battery lifeCons: Poor GPS, unreliable ADSB, CO Detector does not work!I’ve been waiting forever for a lower cost ADSB receiver and finally pulled the trigger when the Sentry was released. Aside from the benefits of in-flight traffic and weather I loved the idea of also having a CO detector onboard. Although I wanted to love this device, the hits just kept coming and, in the end, I ended up returning the Sentry.Upon receiving my receiver, my initial impressions were mixed. Opening the box, you are greeted with a nice, branded, zip-up case. Inside the case comes the receiver, usb cable, RAM mount and instruction booklet. I’m not trying to nit-pick, but for $500 you would think they would have thrown a power adapter in as well.The receiver itself feels kind of cheap – again not what you would expect for a $500 device, but I guess with the inflated costs of aviation products it’s passable. The “quick connect” to the RAM mount is nice and has a snug connection but as you will read later, the RAM mount proved to be a problem as well.I charged the Sentry up like any other aviation nerd took it out to my back porch to do some ground testing. Connecting to the Sentry was a breeze – and sure enough it was immediately recognized by Foreflight. Almost immediately I started seeing some traffic but it was inconsistent – no big deal since I’m in my backyard and not in the air. Strangely, I noticed that my GPS performance was poor opposed to the 5m accuracy I generally get while flight planning on my back porch. I moved around my yard a little bit (note we have absolutely 0 trees on our property) and still the same. I was a little concerned but didn’t want to pass judgment – the device is designed to be stuck to an airplane window after all.Itching to get some flight time with this, I scheduled my club plane and a CFI to be my safety pilot as I tested the new gear out. After pre-flight, I pulled the Sentry out of my bag and that’s when things started to go downhill. My CFI pointed out that the club was no longer allowing the black suction mounts because they were causing damage to the aircraft windows. He pointed out a few spots and sure enough there were “distortion” rings all over the side and front windows. Against the club’s better wishes, he allowed me to attach the Sentry over one of the existing distortion rings as long as I promised that I would get another mount for future flights. (Note: I did some more research after our flight and sure enough this is a documented thing.) How did the design team miss something like this??!After starting up, I powered the Sentry up and connected my iPad mini 3. While doing our runup, I again noticed poor GPS accuracy. I mentioned my backyard test to my CFI and he said it shouldn’t have mattered but we could troubleshoot some more in the air. Normal take-off and I kept glancing at Foreflight waiting for the ADSB towers to start coming in and for GPS accuracy to fall in line. My CFI mentioned that generally he gets 3 – 4 towers on his Stratus 2 and no more than 10m accuracy on the GPS. After a little while longer, we finally got our first tower and the GPS accuracy was finally at 10m (not great, but manageable). My CFI finally broke down and pulled out his Stratus 2 and in the spirt of testing mounted it right next to my Sentry. Sure enough, we were pulling 4 towers and 5m gps accuracy. After another 10 minutes of Hobbs time wasted on resetting, reposition and frustration, I decided that it was time to turn back.Back on the ground, we were discussing the Sentry and I mentioned to my CFI the promise of CO detection. He asked if I’d be willing to let him test it. I was already fed up with this device but figured why not. We took the Sentry back to his house and he setup a make-shift CO test with a Sensorcon CO tester he had. It was a very basic test using a plastic container with a lid and butane torch lighter, but the results were jaw-dropping. While the Sensorcon registered in at a deadly 120 ppm, the Sentry registered at 0 ppm! I could have been flying around with a false sense of safety while sucking in huge amounts of CO! Aside from being broken or non-functioning, did the manufacturer not even think to include some sort of self test? I honestly don't know if I can trust this product.A suction cup that can damage your windows, poor gps reception, poor adsb reception and a broken CO detector to boot. These are all of the reasons why I returned my Sentry and will be looking elsewhere for my ADSB needs. Very disappointing.