Connect via the Serial Port

Enroute Flight Navigation is able to connect to your traffic data receiver using serial port connections. Connections via USB are also supported. Compared with Wi-Fi, serial port connections are equally reliable, but require manual configuration. By nature, serial ports support only point-to-point connections, so that only one single app can access traffic data at any given time. Pilots and co-pilots must therefore decide who gets to see traffic data.

Note

Enroute Flight Navigation expects a stream for FLARM/NMEA sentences from the serial port device. Enroute Flight Navigation is not able to integrate into a CAN-Bus environment.

Note

Serial port devices are currently not supported on the Android platform. For that reason, serial port communication is not available at all on Android devices.

Note

Serial port devices are not supported by the iOS platform. For that reason, serial port communication is not available at all on iPhone or iPad devices.

One-time Setup

Step 0: Before You Connect

Before you try to connect this app to your traffic receiver, make sure that the following conditions are met.

  • The hardware is set up.

  • Your traffic receiver is switched on and broadcasts FLARM/NMEA via its serial port.

  • Your device is connected to the serial port and no other app uses the serial port connection.

Step 1: Configure a Data Connection to the Serial Port Device

Follow the steps described in the Section Settings: Data Connections. You will need to know or guess the name of the serial port on your device.

Step 2: Check Connectivity

After the data connection to the serial port device has been configured in Step 1, everything else should be automatic. To check, open the main menu and navigate to the “Information” menu. If the entry “Traffic Receiver” is highlighted in green, then Enroute Flight Navigation has already found the traffic receiver and has connected to it. Congratulations, you are done!

If the entry “Traffic Receiver” is not highlighted in green, then something has gone wrong. Open the main menu and go to “Information/Traffic Receiver”. Make sure that your device is in discoverable mode and use the button “Reconnect”. Failing that, you are out of luck.

Daily Operations

Once things are set up properly, your device should automatically detect the traffic receiver’s Bluetooth adaptor and connect to the traffic data stream whenever you go flying. We recommend the following procedure.

  • Connect your device to the serial port cable.

  • After you power on the avionics and the traffic receiver has booted, start Enroute Flight Navigation.

  • Enroute Flight Navigation will connect to your traffic data receiver via the configured serial port connection and show traffic information in the moving map.

  • If the data connection gets lost in mid-flight, Enroute Flight Navigation will automatically try to re-connect.

Troubleshooting

Permission Issues on Linux Systems

On Linux systems, serial ports are typically accessed through device files such as /dev/ttyUSB0, /dev/ttyACM0, or /dev/ttyS0. By default, these devices are often restricted to specific user groups, which means Enroute Flight Navigation may not be able to access the serial port even though the hardware is properly connected.

Symptoms

If you experience permission issues, you might see one or more of the following:

  • The app cannot detect or connect to the serial port device

  • Error messages about “permission denied”

  • The serial port device appears in system tools but not in the app

Solution: Add Your User to the dialout Group (Recommended)

The most common and permanent solution is to add your user account to the group that has permission to access serial ports. On most Linux distributions, this group is called dialout.

  1. Open a terminal

  2. Run the following command (replace username with your actual username):

    sudo usermod -a -G dialout username

  3. Log out completely and log back in (or reboot your computer) for the changes to take effect

  4. Verify the change by running: groups - you should see dialout in the list

Distribution-Specific Notes

  • Ubuntu/Debian: The group is typically dialout

  • Fedora/RHEL/CentOS: The group is typically dialout or uucp

  • Arch Linux: The group is typically uucp or lock

  • openSUSE: The group is typically dialout

If dialout doesn’t work, check which group owns your serial port device by running:

ls -l /dev/tty*

The output will show the group name (usually the third column from the left), and you can add your user to that group instead.

Still Having Issues?

If permission issues persist after following these steps:

  • Make sure you completely logged out and back in after adding yourself to the group

  • Check if SELinux or AppArmor policies are blocking access (advanced users)

  • Verify the serial device is working by testing with another application like minicom or screen

  • Check system logs with dmesg | tail to see if there are any hardware or driver issues