DeLorme inReach SE announced, ships mid to late April

>Did you check the coords on the message?
>Are they more or less what you would expect them to be?

The position reported was about 250 feet off [Edit: checked using Google Maps instead of eyeball. Still] Not bad under the circumstances, and certainly close enough if rescuers were looking for me.

All but a handful of my tracking locations so far have been very close to the road or trail I was traveling at the time. That handful were off 150 feet or less.

>With Bluetooth disabled, my rule of thumb for a ten minute trackpoint interval
>is one percent of battery capacity per hour.

Your battery use rule of thumb matches my experience.

Not sure if turning the inReach SE off at night will make a lot of difference. When the device figures out it's not moving, it reduces tracking messages to once every 4 hours, and battery use drops a lot. Thought I saw a setting for that, but can't find it now. Still, that's excellent default behavior!

— Rex

Just a few follow-up points to issues that have been raised throughout this long (and very helpful) thread:

1. Once you hit the button to send a message, [EDIT!] here is how to delete it if it hasn't gone out yet, copied from Rex's post further below in this thread (thanks Rex!):
a. Select "Messages"
b. Select the message you want to delete
c. Select the *body* of the message you want to delete
d. Scroll up once to show message details
e. Select "Delete"
f. Select "Delete" again to confirm
g. Use the X key to get out.
You can also cancel an SOS request (or rather, perform a procedure that essentially tells the rescue hq, Oh, that's very different … never mind).

2. I suspect that both of us here who inadvertently sent a Preset Message did so in the process of trying to read the customized text. Now that Sync is finally available, you can indeed see all of your Preset Message text and recipients … *AFTER* you send a message! But before you do so, the list of the three Preset Messages now shows about 20 to 24 of the first characters (depending on their width), and no recipients. Still though, that should provide enough of each Preset Message to remind you of which is which.

3. The SE still lacks the ability to display its own GPS coordinates. Given its extensive menu system, I am absolutely baffled why the SE doesn’t have a twelfth menu icon for “GPS” which would provide the option of displaying the coordinates.

4. That aside, any type of message you send to anyone will appear in both the Messages and History menu options, with GPS coordinates shown. (Although note that Messages groups them together by identical recipients, whereas History more helpfully groups them together by date.)

5. If you want to sent a message only to your own InReach SE, then yes, you can do that, and it will also display the GPS coordinates. However, other than not bothering anyone else (including your own email account and/or cell phone), that doesn’t offer any advantages, since the SE still needs to upload the message successfully to the Iridium satellite, and then check for messages successfully to the Iridium satellite. (Note that you can send messages directly to another InReach SE user.) And if you’re on a limited plan, be sure *not* to include your own SE address, since otherwise each message will be charged twice against your quota.

6. For message recipients, your GPS coordinates are displayed in emails, but *not* in text messages. This is a baffling oversight, especially since the text wastes characters by prefacing each message with a full "See [FirstName] [LastName]'s location:" and then concludes with the utterly worthless corporate self-promotion of "DeLorme – Always InReach."

7. Instead, the text has only a map url (which at least on my phone does not trigger the hypertext, although it’s easy enough to type into a phone’s browswer http://dlor.me/ followed by a seven-character alphameric string). The recipient can zoom way in, with the choice of Topo, Aerial, or Road views. IMPORTANT EDIT: To obtain the GPS coordinates, the recipient must click on the little red circle in the map. (This is not at all intuitive — I noticed this only after reading Jim's post below, hence this edit.)

8. However, what it the recipient has just enough cell reception for a text message to get through briefly, but not enough reception to access the internet (whether to view the map or to read an email)? Under that scenario, an SE user who wants to provide GPS coordinates via text must first send a message, copy down the GPS coordinates, then enter those coordinates into a second message.

Re Point 7: Clicking on a track point on the DeLorme map yields its coordinates as well as the options to locate, start tracking, and send a message. Maybe that doesn't work when you type in the map URL. So complicated!

Jim, thanks, I didn't realize that — although I essentially can't use tracking with my Safety Plan (prohibitively expensive), clicking on the single red circle in a regular message similarly reveals the previously concealed GPS coordinates.

Figured out how to delete a pending Preset, Quick Text, or Regular message if it hasn't been sent yet. Lots of steps, but useful to know.

1. Select "Messages"
2. Select the message you want to delete
3. Select the body of the message you want to delete
4. Scroll up once to show message details
5. Select "Delete"
6. Select "Delete" again to confirm
7. Use the X key to get out.

"Quick Text" messages are very handy. When you select the message body to start editing, you will get a small square with a lightning bolt, "+" sign, and the word "Select". Select that square, and you'll see your list of Quick Text messages.

"Quick Text" messages can be edited or added onto, just select the message body, and the keyboard will pop up again. Could be used for something like, "Hi honey, I'm at X trailhead, starting my hike now.", where you replace X with the actual trailhead name. Unfortunately, you cannot combine Quick Text messages; when you select a second QT message, that replaces your previous message.

inReach SE performance still meeting my expectations. Today the inReach SE sent four tracking messages accurately from under a tall, thick second-growth coastal redwood forest, and one text message from near the bottom of a canyon in that forest. Yay!

The more I use the inReach SE, the more I'm impressed with the careful thought that went into the design. I don't see that in very many products.

— Rex

Rex, super helpful on the deletion procedure, many thanks!
(I suspect that my prior attempts didn’t succeed because I didn’t click on the *body* of the message.)

Regarding the three types of messages though, they are best described as Preset, Regular, and Social Media. Quick Text is not a message but rather a component of either a Regular or Social Media message. (And expanding on your caution about attempting to add a second Quick Text string to a message, adding even a first Quick Text string will erase any custom text already written in a message – with no advance warning! – so be sure to reserve adding a Quick Text string as your *first* action in composing a message.)

The only distinction between a Regular vs. Social Media message is that Regular messages are sent to any combination of email addresses, SMS, and/or InReach devices. Social Media messages are sent to any combination of your MapShare, Faceback, and/or Twitter accounts. These two different sets of recipients can be combined into a single Preset Message, but not in a customized message. So yet another baffling omission (especially since MapShare and Facebook appear in my on-line account contacts, but not in my SE contacts), but still not a fatal flaw (since it just requires sending another message if you want to notify both individuals and social media), and unfortunately kind of typical of the SE (i.e., impressive capabilities, but lots of future updates needed to smooth off the rough edges so to speak).

One of the inReach SE firmware updates silently removed two “Tracking” settings:

Stationary Interval – The amount of time between each send of a track point while stationary.

Stationary Radius – The distance the inReach SE must move to not be considered “stationary”.

DeLorme still documents the old behavior here:
http://support.delorme.com/questions.php?questionid=218

I don’t miss those settings much, but I don’t know the default settings. The screen shot in the support page shows 10 minutes and 100 meters, but those might not be the post-update values.

Curious.

— Rex

[Edit to correct typo copied and pasted from DeLorme web site!]

Took my inReach SE on a day hike through Big Basin Redwoods State Park in California today. For those who know the park: Gazos Creek Road, Sunset Trail, Berry Creek Falls Trail, Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail, Middle Ridge Road, Gazos Creek Road.

I was in thick, tall second-growth redwoods and fir trees virtually the entire hike, and in the bottom of a canyon for much of the hike. I had 10-minute tracking turned on, sent 3 messages, and carefully noted my time and position at a couple of spots for comparison later. Total hiking time about 5.5 hours for 11 miles (I'm not fast).

When I got home, I reviewed the locations on DeLorme's maps, and copied-pasted lat/lon into Google Maps for a few locations.

Results:

– Some tracking points were delayed or missing. I would track at 10 minutes for a while, then jump to 14, 10, 16, etc. Biggest jump was 26 minutes.

– The messages I sent were delivered in 2-15 minutes.

– All were pretty close to where I was at the time. Hard to tell for many locations, because the trails are not marked on either DeLorme topos or Google Maps.

– Google Maps and air photos are more accurate than the DeLorme street maps or air photos. For the handful of locations I checked in Google, the offset was less than 20 feet. Same locations in DeLorme's online maps were off by 100 feet or more.

For example, I parked near the bottom of Gazos Creek Road, just west of the bridge, in a pullout on the south side of the road, and sent two messages from there.

DeLorme screen shot showing both messages:

Google screen shots showing one message:


The suggested Google Street View even showed the 2-car dirt pullout I parked in!

The DeLorme Export button has an option for KML, so you can open in Google Maps or Google Earth, but the KML is points only, no lines connecting the dots in time.

Pro tip: You can display most KML/KMZ files in Google Maps, without using Google Earth. Put the KML/KMZ file on a public web site (e.g. Dropbox, Google Docs), copy-and-paste the URL into a Google Maps search box, and your KML/KMZ info will appear in your browser.

Overall the inReach SE performance was very good in a very challenging setting. DeLorme's maps – not as good, but adequate. Astounded at the accuracy of Google's maps and air photos.

— Rex

New firmware version available, no release notes posted on DeLorme site.
F/W vers: 2.2.3322124

I installed it and seemed to have lost the ability to see a bit of the three preset messages and recipients. Maybe I just dreamed that. Oh, well.

The Firmware Upload 'n' Sync ended in an error message. I tried resyncing, which took only seconds. No error message.

I tried sending, then aborting, a message. Seems to work, if you delete it in History before it gets uploaded to Ir. The connected iPod still shows the message, though.

Also, the Contacts shown in the SE are those entered in Explore.DeLorme plus those entered manually. The Contacts shown on the Bluetooth device (an iPod) just seem to be the iPod's contacts. I clicked the Sync button on Explore for my connected Bluetooth device. You'd think it would get the contacts entered from Explore.

Things still seem a little rough around the edges.

I upgraded to the latest firmware today.
I don't notice any differences.
(And I can still see the beginning snippet of each Preset Message.)

Update Release Notes posted:
http://support.delorme.com/questions.php?questionid=236

Mostly boilerplate plus: “Various stability improvements”

Also got an email notice from DeLorme; total useful content:

“The latest update contains several functional improvements, and they are important to install on your inReach before your next trip.””

Highly informative – NOT!

— Rex

4 out of 5 stars. Lots of pictures and screen shots:

http://www.trailgroove.com/issue10.html?autoflip=49

Interesting comments at the end about feeling “Too Connected”.

— Rex

"Various stability improvements"

That is a euphemism for "We made a stab at some bug fixes and hope that we didn't create any new ones."

–B.G.–

I used mine last weekend in PA – so lots of tree cover throughout the trip. I was pretty impressed with how well it did even in that environment.

Doug, which service plan did you get, and why?

It seems to me that the technology is roughly stable. The user interface is rough but stable. The initial cost is affordable. All I need now is an affordable service plan that makes sense.

–B.G.–

"Doug, which service plan did you get, and why?"

I got the recreation plan, mainly for the unlimited tracking. I really only needed the communication aspect for my pet sitter, so the safety plan would have been plenty. But I decided the tracking would be fun to try out, and that I might as well take advantage of it if I was going to carry the thing in the first place.

I've justified it to myself (always a pretty easy task, actually) by offering it to friends to borrow for their trips as well.

I understand about the pet sitter. What about the dog? Can't the pooch reply with a text message? Maybe its paws are too large for the buttons.

–B.G.–

"What about the dog?"

The dog wants to go with you, then you won't have to text it : )

"What about the dog? Can't the pooch reply with a text message? Maybe its paws are too large for the buttons."

Are you kidding? She can use it just fine, but she has no interest in texting me. I had to cut her off because she was sexting with the German Shepherd down the street. Good thing it doesn't do pictures…..

Being an aviator and backpacker, I have considered jumping on the InReach SE bandwagon.

I have a 406MHz PLB that stays in the flight bag and goes on solo or "risky" trips but is rather heavy. You better be in bad shape if you push that red button too.

Being I would have an InReach SE primarily for safety reasons rather than tracking, am I better off getting the safety plan with 10 messages per month and just paying $1.50 per message if I find a need to text more?

$20 activation + 12mo $10 Safety Plan = $140 first year, $120 after

$20 activation + 12mo $25 Recreation Plan = $320 first year, $300 after

Has anyone done the safety plan and exceeded the 10 messages per month? Did the billing go smoothly?

I'd say yes. Why pay more when you really only want it for emergencies, with perhaps the occasional message.

Haven't come close to my max messages, but for the two months I've had it I've had no problems with billing.

I signed up the for the safety plan since I don't have a compelling need for the tracking function, and though I might go over the 10-message free allotment in some months, no way am I going to exceed the entire year-long differential for Safety vs Recreational.

My first invoice included an overage charge, both because I had unwittingly set up my Preset Messages to include my SE as a recipient (hence double counting my messages), and because DeLorme shifts everyone to a 6th of the month to 5th of the following month billing cycle, prorating the first period for both monthly fee and message allotment.

DeLorme claimed that this is published somewhere, but could not identify where, and therefore credited my account.

The next month, the credit was there, but the messages from the prior billing cycle were charged yet again.

So another call to get another credit…

I'm still pleased with my purchase of the SE, given its impressive core functionality, but I sure am wondering about DeLorme competence in other matters.

"DeLorme shifts everyone to a 6th of the month to 5th of the following month billing cycles"

I wonder if that has anything to do with when DeLorme pays Iridium for the satellite service.

–B.G.–

So far I've been very pleased with the inReach SE and I have experienced very similar results with tracking that Rex described. I was backpacking in bit of a canyon area so I purposely brought my Garmin Etrex 20 and my inReach so I could compare tracks. I was surprised to see that the Garmin lost it's lock in the same places that the inReach delayed it's tracking. I'm not surprised that they both lost their signal but was pleasantly surprised that the inReach seemed to recover a signal lock as quickly as the Garmin.

As for the plans, be glad if you are in the USA! The plans in Canada cost more and are really poor. I have to choose a tracking plan or a texting plan. I can't get a nice mix of tracking and texting the way you do in the USA.

You can actually swap plans at no charge but do it on the plan date (5th or 6th?) to avoid surprise overage charges.

I had the original inReach last year and tried using just the safety plan and paying overages as needed. That combined with suspending service ($4 or$5 per month is all you pay for a suspended service) made it pretty cheap to run. The problem with the safety plan and suspending service is that you tend to try and NOT use the device which really defeats the purpose of the inReach and I might as well carry a PLB at no cost if I'm just carrying it for emergency use.

I also found the downside of not having unlimited tracking. My backpacking trip this past week involved a 5.5 hour drive to the trailhead. On the way back home I threw my pack into the back of my truck and forgot to turn off tracking. At 10 min per track point the 5.5 hour drive has cost me (I haven't seen the bill yet :(