DeLorme announced today the inReach Explorer – It incorporates many navigation functions

Jay (& Mike),

Delorme distinguishes between "Tracks" (actually walked) and "Routes" (planned hike).

Tracks: You can turn on "tracking" on the device and have your track saved to MapShare – as described by Mike.

Routes: You can create routes (and waypoints) in MapShare – manually or by upload – and then sync to your inReach. The limit of points in a route is 512. So if you upload for example Halfmile's GPX file for CA Section A, the 7160 twaypoints in it will be compressed to 512 points in the route. Since you mention that you are using your inReach together with a smart phone, I assume that you don't even need routes on the inReach. Just HalfMile's waypoints together with the Delorme Topomap on your smartphone should be sufficient. Otherwise you can of course manually cut the Halfmile tracks into shorter segments and then upload them to your inReach. I don't know what the maximum number of routes (or waypoints) is you can upload to the inReach.

Manfred

"DeLorme claims the Explorer gets 100hrs at 10min tracking. How close have either of you gotten to this? Does logging (on device) at 1 minute eat into this?"
– When only logging to the device (as opposed to uploading to the satellite system), typically using a 10-second interval (necessary for the descents while ski mountaineering, and I don't want to bother switching the interval at a summit), I drop about 1% per hour in the field over the course of a big day (including a few preset messages).
– So extrapolating from that, yes, the claim for 100 hours is realistic.

Jay,

I believe you need to be connected to a computer for syncing the data you intend to sync. On the PCT, I assume, you will have every couple of days access to a computer to do that.

I used the inReach on a month-long trip across the Brooks Range in Alaska and could only recharge via my solar panel. The battery life depends very much on the number of messages you send. Here is a description of my experiences with battery life during that trip. Due to the number of messages we sent/received every day we adjusted the tracking interval to get back to a 90-100 hour battery life.

Manfred

As Manfred points out, battery life is dependant on your usage pattern. The added features of the Explorer (navigation features) have added to my battery consumption because I like to use the new features. I capture a dense GPS track with my Explorer which means the GPS is on continuously. That burns up the battery much quicker than what I experienced with my inReach SE, which only used the GPS every 10 minutes.

The last trip I was on was 6 days long and I used all of the Explorer features extensively (not something I would normally do but I wanted to give it a good test). I sent a lot of messages, paired it with my iphone, captured a detailed GPS track, captured waypoints in the field and sent automatic track points to Mapshare every 10 minutes). After 4 days, I had dropped down to low 40% battery life (max hiking day would be around 8 hrs + camp use). I bummped it back to 100% with my USB charger at that point as I didn't want it to drop too low before recharging.

This is not what I would consider normal use for me. I don't usually take my phone (no bluetooth pairing) and as Manfred says, a 10 minute logging time is not required. Now that I can put down and use a detailed track log on the device, the track points that are sent to Mapshare are not all that important anymore as I can use the detailed GPS tracks for navigation (with the inReach SE, I had to pair it with my phone to see my track log). Tracks sent to MapShare every 30 minutes or so are fine for hiking use.

So if you use the inReach Explorer like an inReach SE and conserve battery use you might get 100 hours but if you use all of the features, you will not get that much battery life (I bought the Explorer for the features so I'm going to use them).

As a side note, one 18650 battery (3400 mah) will provide one full charge to the inReach.

Can an inreach message another inreach?

I was under impression you couldnt initiate contact with one, only reply to ones message.

This doesnt apply to device to device communication?

Or have things changed ?

Ops original statement about communicating with wife via pair of them left me confused.

I've never tried it, but from the brochure: CONVENIENT 160-CHARACTER MESSAGING
Send and receive text messages worldwide,* with delivery confirmation to any cell number, email address or another inReach device.

Yes, you can communicate from inReach to inReach. If you are using an inReach Explorer you can also navigate to the location of the other inReach. That can be quite helpful as described here in our Alaska trip report

Manfred

Thanks,

Apparently there are 2 ways to contact without replying to a sent message, device-device, or thru inreach mapshare page.

Didnot know this.

Have to take my wife's iphone into the woods w me. Maybe this version eliminates the need for a paired phone to send text messages?

Can anyone share what the typical taxes and fees are? A $24.95 base price is reasonable, but at least one Amazon review suggested around $10 in fees. That starts to add up!

I looked at my last billing. $9.95 service charge plus $0.12 tax.

–B.G.–

>> Waypoints captured on the Explorer do transfer to the Mapshare page via salellite, which is nice. Unfortunately, waypoints are more difficult to export from Mapshare and I have a bug report in with Delorme development team regarding this issue. <<

I posted this comment back in February and it now appears that Delorme has fixed the Waypoint Export issue that I was experiencing with their GPX Export routine in Mapshare.

The GPX files that are exported from Mapshare are now formatted correctly and include the correct waypoint tags. The GPX files can now be opened directly in Garmin's Mapsource and waypoints and tracks are displayed correctly.

I'm glad to see that Delorme is listening. Keep up the good work!