InReach and battery failure

Mine gets charged about once a year for a big trip.  It does not seem to discharge when not in use.  I always power it up and check the battery prior to a trip, but unless I’m going on a trip of a week or more, I generally don’t charge it – the battery is generally over 90%.

BTW – I have the first generation iReach SE (the boxy one before Garmin bought them).

I worry that human error (mine) can result in being out in the field, having a real emergency, then looking at my inReach Mini only to see I forgot to recharge it.  That seems to be its achilles heal. Human error.  It does its job but I may not do mine thus defeating the rescue attempt because I monkeyed around with the inReach too much and discharged it or forgot to recharge it.

That issue and worry is not possible with the ACR ResQLink.

Or if you leave it on and forget to turn it off.  Like overnight.

I just turn it on for about half hour each evening to send a message.  Maybe 15 minutes the next morning to read any reply.  Then it will last for a trip.  Once I accidentally left it on and remembered to turn it off in the middle of the night, still plenty of battery.

I take a battery bank to recharge phone, and can also recharge the InReach

Just sitting around the house, turned off, when I power it back up, there has been a small decrease.  Like after 6 months, it might show only 90% when it was 100% when I charged it and turned it off.  The battery last a long time but I have my tracking intervals set at like 2 hours.  There are threads and topics to increase battery charge life.  I Reach camp, send the preset “stopping here, all OK. no reply needed”.  I set it aside as I set up camp.  About half an hour later, I check that it sent and then power down for the night.  I leave it out someplace so I have to “clip it” back to the pack so that reminds me to power up and send “starting from here”.  Also, carry the small cable to recharge it off a battery back up if you are out for long.

I have an inReach Mini. The battery will discharge, while in storage, at a rate of 15 – 20% per month.

When the battery meter shows the battery is discharged 15% from sitting off and idle for a month; the actual current to refill it averages 64 mAh or 5% of the battery’s 1,250 mAh capacity.

As a result, I charge mine once per month or just before a trip; whichever is sooner.

The Inreach takes more caring and feeding than a PLB; it provides a different feature set as well. Like any piece of gear, it’s critical to understand both the feature set and the required ongoing maintenance.

One key point missing thus far is that before each trip (especially infrequent trips) it’s important to sync the Inreach, check for firmware updates as well as send out a test message to know it’s functional and charge it. Like others have pointed out, depending on your usage, you might need to carry a battery pack to keep the Inreach charged during your trip.

I say this as I know of a recent field failure of an Inreach Explorer (the original one from before the Garmin acquisition). When the owner contacted Garmin support after the trip it became clear that the satellite communications subsystem had failed: while the Inreach was able to get a good GPS fix it couldn’t send or receive messages on the Iridium network. Luckily in this case my friend was with others who had a second Inreach that he was able to send messages to his family. They were in a rather remote part of the Canadian Rockies and he was expecting to be able to provide updates along the way. The one thing he did not to do before his trip was to check and sync his Inreach; it had worked fine on a trip to the Sierra in April.

What everyone else has said plus a couple of points FWIW.

1. Set up and load your route before you go and have some person or persons  at home who can monitor your progress. I send 3 pre-recorded messages a day, basically leaving camp, en-route/OK  and finally: at camp/OK. The pre-recorded message will post your location on the map. If you have to hit the SOS button your home monitor will have your route, location of last update, and inreach will have the point of your sos so there shouldn’t be any doubt about exactly where you are.
2. If heaven forbid the monitor doesn’t get one of the 3 daily messages because something happened and you couldn’t/didn’t manage to send an sos because you are incapacitated then there’s still at least one of the 3 location points and the route. Shouldn’t take long to find you in any event.
3. Don’t use it, or use it sparingly, as a gps or a continuous tracking device. Which do you prefer? a continuous track or a device with power when you need it. I guess this could be argued both ways and might very well depend on length of trip, type of terrain etc. If you’re hiking down the AT and passing dozens of people do you really need a track? OTOH if you’re over some sketchy off-trail transition along Skurka’s new Yosemite route past Lyell or something like that maybe you at least record a few locations along the way in case you fall somewhere or something? SO plan your tracking according to a worst case scenario with one of those worst cases being no power.
4. Absolutely verify it’s all working before you go anywhere, especially somewhere like the Canadian Rockies. Practice around home. It’s a fun little gadget.
5. My experience with the battery is that it’s going to last for weeks if you’re not burning it up tracking.

BTW late last August on my first trip with the mini I was in Titcomb and the weather was starting to look sketchy. I started getting the “extra” or more detailed weather reports since things didn’t look too swell and also checked with a couple of rangers along the trail who verified they’d heard things might get bad; but the forecast was still iffy. Then I met a mom/duaghter team with dad at home in Seattle carefully checking the weather. He had just messaged them to: ‘Get out now”  Ended up snowing 6″ and more depending on elevation and lasted the night and all the next day. Kind of weather you might not want to be on the other side of say Indian Pass..Neat thing is with the 2-way communication they got up-to-date, accurate and detailed (if terse!) info from home, so maybe you can get the home team to provide weather updates on trips where bad weather might be more critical.

Oh and finally check the thread about S.A.R. insurance and Evacuation insurance. Lots of great info. And if you get the insurance through inreach there’s no question about who is controlling the SAR and ordering helicopters etc. What a mess. Wonder how much this one cost? Meadow at Indian Creek outlet August 2017

I have the old Explorer and used it for a week in the Sierra without a recharge.  I had it on for a few hours in camp each day.  If you want the emergency function ready at hand or a report of your progress you might need to recharge on a trip that long or longer.

Like others, I recharge before any hike, or if I forget the night before in the car on the way to the trailhead.

“If you don’t pay close attention, can’t the battery of the inReach discharge completely when out in the field thus leaving you without any means to reach the cavalry, or am I missing something?”

Somehow my wife has managed to do this for the second or third time.  I don’t have a clue how. Clearly operator or “pack” error.  We are currently waiting for the shampoo bottle to empty so we can make a cover for the keypad.

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/delorme-inreach-lock-failure/#post-3494382

I have the two year old Garmin Inreach.  To turn it on, you have to

1) press the power button

2) toggle the menu from “cancel” to “turn on”,

3) Press return (the check button).

There are both an audible alarm and a green LED light telling you that you are turning the device on.

So I think it would be very improbable to turn it on accidentally.

Get a new acr battery and forget the fad inreach.

John S, different tools for different places. Locally (New England) I carry a PLB. I can almost always squeeze out a text anywhere in Maine or NH I go. Heading out west I take the InReach. It gets my permission slip signed by the boss so she can see that I’m alive. Also I like getting the weather if I feel it’s needed.

I just happened to fire mine up yesterday after about a year of it sitting in the drawer. Had 25% battery left and it gave me a warning message to keep it above 25% in case of rescue. I renewed my subscription, synced it, and tested it. Can’t wait to use it again at the end of August.

FWIW – I’ve got the inReach SE (I think…  it’s the yellow one without the maps; bought it on sale right as the mini was hitting the market).

The longest trip I’ve been on since I’ve had it was 4 days, and while I didn’t use the location pin feature, I did request weather reports and used the 2-way messaging extensively while out, and left it on the whole time in a deliberate attempt to test battery life.  When I got back to my truck I was at 80% battery.  The power-on idle mode uses VERY little battery, and I’ve had it sitting on the shelf off for months on end and it still reads 90+% battery.

I totally understand the concern, but as long as you charge it before your planned trips, it’ll be there for you.

Thanks everyone. I feel the concern about the battery failing in the field has been addressed and no an issue.

“So I think it would be very improbable to turn it on accidentally.”

I agree.  So I took a closer look at what could happen inside a pack. And here is the exception –

A single long press turns the unit on. Obviously this unit is malfunctioning.  (And exonerates my wife from “operator error”.)  So much for probability.   If you have mysterious battery failure I suggest this simple test.

(I’ll be calling Garmin on Monday.)

@Greg

Yup. Looks like a fatal error.

I have the Garmin InReach Explorer. IF you hold the power button on and do not proceed to steps 2) toggle the menu from “cancel” to “turn on” and 3) press X, the unit powers down within a few seconds.

So either your unit is “malfunctioning” or they fixed this problem with the release of the first Garmin Inreach units.

Greg, I don’t think that was powered off. When the device is on you hold the power button down until the power off dialog comes up, select power off and then click the button once rather than holding it down.

I was a bit clumsy so I made another video and in the process discovered that it takes only a single click to power up the unit –

Notice that the Power On and Cancel options do not appear.  The resolution maybe to re-load the software.

After it AutoStarts in the pack it soon goes into PowerSaving mode and turns the screen off. When you look at the unit you don’t realize it is on.  But when you do try to do something with it you will have a 0% battery, or just nothing until you start charging.

I suggest to anyone with mysterious battery issues to perform a “one click” test.

Yeah that ain’t right. It sounds like time to update, reflash, reload or whatever it’s called. Bummer.

I tried the “press and hold until it turns on”.   Mine, didn’t turn on.  After a moment it made the “shut down noise” and powered back off.

UPDATE: All is well.

Spoke with Garmin. Did a Soft Reset (hold X and down-arrow). Did a Sync.  Unit behaves as expected. No single-key AutoStart.  No guess as to why this happened. No acknowledgement it has happened before.

A friend has the original Inreach Explorer and it also turns on with the single key……

I suggested he call Garmin.

My Delorme InReach has had some issues with turning on accidentally. I think they’ve updated the software over the years to make it more difficult to turn on. For a while, a single long press would do it, but now I get the confirmation screen and that’s much better. A couple years ago I had a few incidents where it was on without me realizing for a while and I burned through a good chunk of the battery.

My inReach SE powers on just as Greg’s video describes – which explains a lot. I’ll try the soft reset + sync to see if that fixes. Would be nice if Garmin told us about this …

— Rex