Anyone using an inReach 2-way Satellite Communicator?

craig333 said:
We've also recently launched a new system status page at https://status.inreach.garmin.com, which includes posts about scheduled and unscheduled events that affect any area of the inReach system. To get updates automatically delivered to you, just click on the Subscribe to Updates button at the top of the page.
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I recall getting that email and filing it away. Thanks, Craig, for the reminder. I've subscribed to incident reports via SMS text message, as that is more likely to reach me while traveling - which is when a unscheduled event would be of most interest.
 
craig333 said:
Hopefully everyone was contacted but just in case.

NOTICE: Our inReach email addresses are changing
On Wednesday, December 21st, we are changing our system email addresses from delorme.com to garmin.com. You will notice that all the auto-generated emails sent by the inReach system will come from a Garmin address instead of a DeLorme address. In order to ensure that none of the emails sent to you get diverted to your junk mail, please update any email filters or routing that look for delorme.com addresses.

The two common system addresses which will be replaced are as follows:


We've also recently launched a new system status page at https://status.inreach.garmin.com, which includes posts about scheduled and unscheduled events that affect any area of the inReach system. To get updates automatically delivered to you, just click on the Subscribe to Updates button at the top of the page.


Sincerely,
The inReach Team
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This link ( https://status.inreach.garmin.com ) appears to be broken....... how about an update. Thank you
 
Got it. I thought this was the service I discussed with a support rep a few months ago. He mentioned a service where a user would be notified in the event of conditions which would put the user in danger. Based on the users current location, they would be notified of issues like weather or forest fires in the area or direction user was traveling. He also mentioned a service to attach a device to car that would enable me to track my car.
Those were of interest to me. Especially the proactive emergency notifications. Do you have any information on these services.
 
In the status page you can opt for email updates:
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BobM said:
In the status page you can opt for email updates:
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Can I use the inReach Address since I would not want to be checking email while I am on the trail. Otherwise, it negates the reason for hiking and wanting to get away from email.
 
On the subject of sending messages, I did some experimenting sending text messages and email to my wife. The text message arrived in just a few minutes. The email message took almost 20 hours to arrive. Her email account is on gmail so pretty normal.

Anyone else have any experience with this. I was wondering as last year my mother became very ill while I was traveling out of cell phone coverage and I was using my inReach for communications with the nurse to her email address. I noticed that the messages were not arriving or being received consistently which was unnerving. At the time I thought it was a fluke but as I am getting ready for another trip it seemed like a good idea to test the service again. At this point, I would be concerned if I HAD to contact someone. A full day delay seems excessive.
Is text messages a better method to communicate to someone in an emergency? I am asking about the technical reliability using inReach communications to SMS text versus inReach to email. Does anyone know if one has better performance and reliability than the other when using a inReach device.
 
I'm having the same issue. An email takes 19 hours, a text message takes 5 minutes. Not sure if it's related to the change to garmin but I don't remember emails being that slow before. I don't use the messaging feature very often though so I'm not sure how consistent these times are.
 
Wow. In an earlier post there was a discussion about using the inReach to notify a friend if you are out of cell reception and had car trouble. Good thing I know to not email them. 19 to 20 hours for an email message to go through!

I don't like to be critical of a company on a public forum but that doesn't seem like a very good service. Actually a little scary.
 
Wow. In an earlier post there was a discussion about using the inReach to notify a friend if you are out of cell reception and had car trouble. Good thing I know to not email them. 19 to 20 hours for an email message to go through!

I don't like to be critical of a company on a public forum but that doesn't seem like a very good service. Actually a little scary.
 
I'd be interested to learn more about the email delay issue and how often it happens.

I just did a quick test message to both my email and phone (i.e., one message, two recipients). Both my laptop and phone alerted audibly to indicate message arrival within about 20 seconds of my hearing the 'message has gone' beep from the Inreach.

The text and email messages are time-stamped to the same minute.
 
Old Crow said:
I'd be interested to learn more about the email delay issue and how often it happens.

I just did a quick test message to both my email and phone (i.e., one message, two recipients). Both my laptop and phone alerted audibly to indicate message arrival within about 20 seconds of my hearing the 'message has gone' beep from the Inreach.

The text and email messages are time-stamped to the same minute.
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I received an email today from Garmin stating that there had been some issues with sending email and text messages. I tested the function again and everything seems to be working much better. It took less than a minute to receive both the email and the text messages from the time that my inReach indicated that it was sent. Hopefully this doesn't happen very often.
 
rltports said:
I received an email today from Garmin stating that there had been some issues with sending email and text messages. I tested the function again and everything seems to be working much better. It took less than a minute to receive both the email and the text messages from the time that my inReach indicated that it was sent. Hopefully this doesn't happen very often.
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Thanks for the followup! I appreciate it.

Quick story--

Before I bought my Inreach, I used a first-generation SPOT satellite messenger. Messages didn't always go through so I included my own text and email addresses in the OK preset to see what I could learn. Over time, my daily OK messages gave me a sense of how reliable it was, how quickly messages were delivered, and what the conditions were that led to failed message attempts. I learned I could generally trust the SPOT so long as I didn't have a long period of alternate blinking LEDS (indicating loss of satellite view) during it's 20-minute cycle. That meant in broken cover I had to keep an eye on the status lights. And I found it's better to power the SPOT down and initiate a new message rather than wait if it seemed to be struggling to come out of a loss-of-satellite-view situation.

Though I've found my Inreach more reliable, I still include my addresses in my OK preset. I like getting the confirmation (when in cell-tower range) and I like to look at the maps presented to the recipients. I keep those emails for later reference. For instance, I like Google maps better so I'll copy the coordinates from the Inreach email and put them in to Google Maps and look at the various map-types. And I like to click on the Show Imagery icon to see photos of the area.
 
I contacted Garmin customer support yesterday and again today about their incident report of May 16 (see below).

First, I was surprised to hear the agent I spoke with yesterday say she was unaware of any such problem. I had her go to the status report page and it was indeed news to her. To her credit, she apologized and said she'd take up the issue with her supervisor to determine why she hadn't known about it. Also, she immediately saw the issue-- what good is a status reporting system that only tells you about something that happened two days ago? In response to my question "Is there any way to see reports older than 7 days?" (in order to get a feel for how often this happens) she said no, sorry, there isn't, either for the public or for customer service agents.

This morning, I called in again to check on an account issue and this time was connected with a more knowledgable agent. As we finished my account issue, I mentioned I had called in yesterday and the agent didn't know about the message-flow incident. It turns out I had been talking to someone from the Outdoor Products Team on that call, not someone from the Inreach Team. I believe this happened because of their phone system. Phone tree option 3.3 takes the caller to 'Hiking, Hunting, Geocaching, Inreach, and Virb Action Cameras' and that's where an agent picks up. (Note to self-- on anything other than a routine-info call, ask for an Inreach Team member).

This second agent said the problem had been an odd issue they hadn't seen before. It happened on a weekend and it took the engineer on call some time to respond, investigate, and repair. The agent said the engineer had focussed so tightly on a solution to the problem that status reporting had been neglected. The issue of status reporting being too late has been discussed at some length in team meetings and changes are being made to improve it.

The agent also confirmed the idea that SOS transmissions had not been affected by the incident.

I also asked him about the status-reports history and he confirmed it's only available for seven days. He also said incidents like this are rare.

-------
inReach SMS and Email Messaging Delay

From 9:30 PM EDT May 13th to 9 AM EDT on May 14th, some customers experienced a delay in their SMS (text) and email messages. All messages sent during that time were delivered shortly after 9 AM. New customers or those who hadn't used their inReach in a while were more likely to be affected. SOS communication was not affected.
We have made updates to alert us of this issue immediately. Should it recur while we are working on a permanent fix, we can correct it within minutes.
May 16, 11:38 EDT
------------
 
I have had my Inreach Explorer for a year. On several occasions the Inreach and my cell phone fell out of sync. Part of my trip is then on my phone. The only way I could get things fixed was with my laptop and I was usually somewhere with no internet. When I got home I ended up with the phone showing the correct mapping, but the Inreach had an as the Crow flies mapping line. I was told to keep the Inreach and cell phone together. I tried to sync the cell phone and Inreach and don't think that ever worked. Hoping for some comments and hoping to figure out how to keep them synced. jd
 
longhorn1 said:
I have had my Inreach Explorer for a year. On several occasions the Inreach and my cell phone fell out of sync. Part of my trip is then on my phone. The only way I could get things fixed was with my laptop and I was usually somewhere with no internet. When I got home I ended up with the phone showing the correct mapping, but the Inreach had an as the Crow flies mapping line. I was told to keep the Inreach and cell phone together. I tried to sync the cell phone and Inreach and don't think that ever worked. Hoping for some comments and hoping to figure out how to keep them synced. jd
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I've had the same experience. I've paired my IPhone to my Toyota exactly once in 3 years. I've paired my inreach to the phone several times in 1 year. I also have to "forget this device" in order to re-pair to the inreach. However I can do it in the field with no signal, the "forget this device" step appears to be critical. Maybe garmin needs some better software engineers.
 
(Loss of pairing)
My Inreach Explorer has lost pairing (to my iPad2) once in the 20 months I've had it so I'm probably not the best person to respond to this. My one event was about a year ago so I don't remember much about it (other than the frustration of several attempts to get it paired again). I don't believe I had a theory on why the unpairing happened at the time. Today I'm wondering if it happened because of an iOS update. I had updated both the iPad and Inreach in preparation for the trip and had multiple problems with the iOS one. But that may have just been a coincidence.

(Getting the phone/tablet to pair when they won't)
On that one occasion, mine paired after a few tries so I didn't get to the point of looking for help. Today I found this advice and will keep it somewhere in case I have a problem in the future.
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After telling both the phone and the inReach to "forget" one another, reboot both devices.
Without running the Earthmate app, pair the inReach and the phone using the phone's Bluetooth settings options.
Reboot both devices again.
Run the Earthmate app. It should connect automatically.
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It's from here and here.

I also called in to the Inreach Team about pairing this morning. The tech recommended a complete unpair, turn off Bluetooth entirely, do a soft-reset on the Inreach (hold down the X and down-arrow keys for ten seconds), and then follow the manual's pairing instructions to establish a fresh pairing. I then read the above instructions I found on the web to him and he said that's essentially what he said but he thinks the last set of reboots aren't necessary.

Unfortunately, the instructions above are about establishing a pairing but the problem reported is about unexpectedly losing it. Articles on losing pairing seem to point to the main culprits being glitchy hardware or software and interference from other electronics. They typically recommend updating to the latest releases on phone/tablet and device and turning off or moving away from suspected 'interferers' (in this article, for example) The Inreach tech also made this point about keeping phone and Inreach current in our conversation today. If you happen to be back-leveled, it's a thought.


Also---- I ran onto a more direct line in to the Inreach team on a web forum. The old Delorme number of 800-511-2459 still works and bypasses the Garmin phone tree. It worked for me and the tech said it was okay to use it--- just another door to the same room.
 
longhorn1 said:
I have had my Inreach Explorer for a year. On several occasions the Inreach and my cell phone fell out of sync. Part of my trip is then on my phone. The only way I could get things fixed was with my laptop and I was usually somewhere with no internet. When I got home I ended up with the phone showing the correct mapping, but the Inreach had an as the Crow flies mapping line. I was told to keep the Inreach and cell phone together. I tried to sync the cell phone and Inreach and don't think that ever worked. Hoping for some comments and hoping to figure out how to keep them synced. jd
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I've had the inReach for 3 years and only occasionally paired it with my Android phone because the Earthmate app sucks the battery and it's too fussy trying to use two devices at once. I use it mostly for communications, for potential emergencies, and as a backup to my handheld GPS receiver which is better at navigation. When I do pair it, things generally work okay even after firmware updates. Originally under DeLorme the Earthmate app could not sync waypoints with the inReach--a hard wire to the computer had to be used--although that seems to be fixed now under Garmin.
 
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