Thread: Garmin inreach messenger

My experience with the inreach mini has been pretty good. Number one you must load all your contacts via Garmin explore and then sync the device. Messaging and replying via text is not an issue - adds up depending on plan but worked well with Heli operators. Inreach to inreach is great and worked well in Fiordland last year and south Westland this year. When sending email it’s just been one way Comms which has been fine can always use the text option. That being said it looks like Starlink and Vodafone (one nz) will be a game changer - be interest8 g to see what the plan cost could be.

Looks like 2024 before they roll it out, and then it's going to be a slow time thing. Messaging only, followed by some voice capability followed by some data with no timeframe to when the capabilities roll out... Looks like Voda/1NZ have done the big reveal as part of the rebranding but the details are very much a work in progress and wait until 2024 when we confirm it!

Apparently 2deg is in the final stages of negotiating with a satellite service provider, and Spark is in talks with everyone else as to the best way forwards before they announce anything. It will be interesting to see who rolls out the capability first, and in the final washup who's done it best...

The biggest advantage I can see is one device (cellphone) doing it all - almost the same as the dual-sim phones when they came on the scene allowing you to run a voda and a telecom sim. I think you could see the cellphone in conjunction with a powerbank take over all back country duties apart from PLB - and sure as anything someone will invent an app to do that. If I was Garmin, I'd be looking to bring out a cellphone device incorporating a PLB, a radio and a scanning doohickey for the pighunting boys as their market share on sat comms is not going to be looking flash that's for sure...

I'm sure hoping 2D can pull this off as I wont give money to Voda

Update.
This thing just randomly started working properly with no replies or contact from garmin.

Glad it now works but hasn't exactly filled me with confidence

I've got the 66i Inreach and done a few trips with it now. Found it good in terms of the messaging to and fro - once set up properly. The painful things are:

1. Basecamp - which I spent untold hours learning to use - is now redundant it seems and the Explorer app is how you communicate and swap files etc. It is no better than basecamp - as others here have said it is a classic bit of software written by youngsters who assume everyone is expert in garmin-speak.
2.Also they changed Tracks to Activities. My 66i was beeping at me in the bush and I could not work out why, and thought maybe a memory issue, and I found activities and figured I'd never heard of those so deleted them to make space. Issue was that I thereby accidentally deleted the tracks I had spent 3 days walking and recording..... OK my fault, but it is not at all intuitive and why would they change something like that? Turns out is was beeping at me to warn that I was to "Continue to Paved road" as for some reason, navigation had turned on and assumed I was heading to a road, even though "hunting" was set up as the profile. Maybe thats USA hunting? Eventually I figured out how to turn navigation off....
3. Garmin support is non existent. If you can't work it out yourself, there is no hope of anyone else doing so from the garmin end. Probably a profitable business model, until there is an alternative...
4. It is good being able to send texts. But you also need to include on the texts that you get charged for replies so don't reply to "all going well here" type texts - unless it's important.
5. I can see I'm at the beginning of another 50 hour learning journey to work out how to use a laptop etc to set up a map showing tracks and block boundaries etc so that can be loaded on GPS and shared. Explorer is an awful piece of software. Reminds me of the IRD site where the IRD boffins assume everyone is an expert with their internal jargon.
6. The aerial is OK, better than Monterra but not as good as 62s and needs to be exposed to the sky on your shoulder, not in a pocket.
7. I reckon its a great backup for an EPIRB incorporating GPS.
8. Battery life is pretty good as long as you have the screen set to turn off after 2 mins, as by default it stays on all the time. 10 hours use with the screen off uses less than 30% of the battery.

Maybe someone knows of youtube or other tutorials that speed up the process of learning how to get activities tracks waypoints etc off the 66i and onto explorer, saved in a collection and then edited by colour and description so as to show all the block tracks waypoints and boundaries, without double ups?

Originally Posted by Happy Jack

I'm sure hoping 2D can pull this off as I wont give money to Voda

You don't need to worry about giving them money, When I was with them the most difficult thing was paying my bills. Even after I left them they still threatened me with debt collecters over the $3 my account was in CREDIT.