Comparison

StellarTrack AR vs Bug Detector

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

StellarTrack AR

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StellarTrack shows you where weather satellites are in the sky right now, overlaid on your camera view, so you can aim an antenna at them with confidence. Point your phone at the sky. Each tracked satellite appears as a marker where it actually is, with live azimuth and elevation you can read off directly. Lock onto one and an arrow guides you until you are on target. WHAT IT TRACKS โ€ข METEOR-M2-3 and METEOR-M2-4 โ€” Russian polar orbiters broadcasting LRPT โ€ข GK-2A โ€” Korean geostationary satellite โ€ข GOES-18 โ€” NOAA geostationary satellite over the eastern Pacific FEATURES Live AR pointing Satellite markers rendered in a live camera view, anchored to true north and gravity. Aim the phone the way you would aim the antenna. Precise azimuth and elevation Read the exact bearing and elevation for any tracked satellite. Positions are computed on device with the standard SGP4 orbital model. Pass predictions See when each polar orbiter rises next, how long until it does, and how high it will climb at peak. Plan a reception session before you set up. Below-horizon preview Satellites that have not risen yet still appear, dimmed, so you can see which direction the next pass will come from. Compass health warnings Phone compasses drift near metal and magnets. StellarTrack tells you when the heading has become unreliable instead of silently pointing you the wrong way. Works offline Location, compass and all orbital mathematics run entirely on your device. Only refreshing orbital elements needs a connection, and cached data keeps working in the meantime. Multilingual Full English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese interface. PRIVACY StellarTrack collects nothing. There are no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking of any kind. Your location is used on your device to compute bearings and is never uploaded. The camera feed is never recorded or saved. The only network request the app makes is downloading public orbital elements from CelesTrak, identified by each satellite's public catalog number, containing no personal data. A NOTE ON ACCURACY Orbital positions come from public elements refreshed every few hours and are accurate enough to aim an antenna. In practice your phone's compass is the larger source of error, which is why the app warns you when calibration is poor. This is a pointing aid, not survey-grade instrumentation. REQUIREMENTS Requires a device with ARKit support, a camera, and location services enabled.

About

Bug Detector

Features
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Stakeout is a listening stakeout. You put the phone down, walk away, and come back to a timestamped tape of the steady tones it heard in the near-ultrasonic band โ€” the range above ordinary hearing that a phone microphone can still sample. WHAT IT ACTUALLY DOES There is no live spectrum in this app. No waterfall, no decibel meter, no needle to watch. That is deliberate. A meter tells you about the instant you happen to be looking at it; a tape tells you what happened while you were not in the room. The running screen is a session clock and a log, and the output is evidence with timestamps. TEST YOUR OWN PHONE FIRST Before a session, run the self-test. Stakeout plays 16, 18, 20 and 21 kHz through the speaker, measures what your microphone returns, and prints the measured response for each one. Not a spec sheet copied from somewhere โ€” your handset, in your room, at your volume. Microphone response above 20 kHz varies enormously between phones, so the honest thing is to measure it and show you, rather than promise a flat response nobody can guarantee. THE TAPE Every row is one event: the wall-clock time it started, the frequency, how long it held, and how far above the room's own noise it sat. Times are zero-padded and absolute โ€” never "3 minutes ago" โ€” because a log you might act on needs real timestamps. Tones that stop and restart are folded into one row with a count, so a pulsing source reads as one finding rather than forty. A tone has to hold for at least two seconds to be logged at all. That single rule removes almost everything a room throws at a microphone: a chair scraping, a door, a cough, a passing car. THE UNVERIFIED BAND The region above 20 kHz is drawn differently and labelled unverified, because that is the truth: it sits where phone microphones start to roll off and where your particular handset may hear nothing at all. The self-test is what tells you which side of that line you are on. WHAT YOU GET FREE - The full near-ultrasonic detector, 15 to 22 kHz - Sessions up to 15 minutes - Three saved tapes - The loopback self-test, unlimited - Steady tones in the audible band logged as events WHAT PRO ADDS - Sessions with no time limit, running all night - Every tape kept, not only your last three - Export a tape as plain text, timestamps and all - Detection strictness: loose, standard or strict BEING HONEST ABOUT THE LIMITS A phone cannot scan the radio spectrum. It cannot detect an analogue transmitter, and it cannot find a wired or fully passive microphone โ€” those things emit nothing a microphone can hear. Any app claiming otherwise is selling you a feeling. What a phone can do is listen very carefully, in a band you cannot. A tone in your tape is something worth explaining. It is not, on its own, proof of surveillance โ€” ultrasonic tones also come from motion sensors, some televisions, rodent repellers, cleaning equipment and a surprising number of ordinary appliances. The app gives you the evidence and the timestamps; the conclusion is yours. PRIVACY No account, no sign-up, no analytics and no tracking. Audio is analysed live on the device and is never recorded, saved or uploaded โ€” the tape holds numbers, not sound. The only connection the app makes is the subscription check with the App Store. SUBSCRIPTION Stakeout Pro is $3.99 per week with a 3-day free trial, or $17.99 per year. Payment is charged to your Apple ID at confirmation of purchase. Subscriptions renew automatically unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your account is charged for renewal within 24 hours before the end of the current period. You can manage and cancel your subscription in your App Store account settings. Any unused portion of a free trial is forfeited when you buy a subscription. Privacy Policy: https://leomarston.github.io/manycode-legal/privacy.html Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

StellarTrack AR2 screens
Bug Detector4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: StellarTrack AR at none against Bug Detector's 2. On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Bug Detector sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per 7 days. StellarTrack AR asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard1 real difference ยท 4 level
StellarTrack AR versus Bug Detector: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterStellarTrack ARBug Detector
PriceFreeFree
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo โ€” betterYes
DevicesiPhoneiPhone
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details โ€” not scored
Size4 MB15 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperYANG SONGEmine Saridogan

In-app purchases

None

StellarTrack AR

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

Bug Detector

Subscriptions2
  • Weekly3 Days trial$3.997 Days
  • Yearly$17.991 Year

Questions

Is StellarTrack AR free?
StellarTrack AR is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Bug Detector free?
Bug Detector is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do StellarTrack AR or Bug Detector have ads?
Neither StellarTrack AR nor Bug Detector shows ads.

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