I’m sure you’ve heard the typical ‘GSM sound’ on an FM radio by chance when a phone call comes in and the phone was close to a radio. It doesn’t happen that much anymore of course, as devices are mostly camping on LTE and 5G networks these days. But if you manually select GSM, you … Continue reading When All Else Fails – The Garmin InReach Mini 2 – Part 13 – Hearing Iridium
Wow, this is already part 12 in my blog series on the Garmin InReach Mini 2 and the underlying Iridium satellite constellation. Perhaps you remember, my main use case for the Mini 2 is to have a means to communicate with family members in other countries should there be a longer network outage, be it … Continue reading When All Else Fails – The Garmin InReach Mini 2 – Part 12 – Capacity for InReach
In part 6, I’ve taken a look at how much power my Garmin InReach draws in various scenarios. Depending on where the device was located and used throughout the days, the battery would last me anywhere between 16 days in the best case and only a single day in case no satellite can be reached … Continue reading When All Else Fails – The Garmin InReach Mini 2 – Part 11 – More About Power Consumption
The Garmin InReach Mini 2 keeps fascinating me beyond the 9 blog entries I made last year, so needless to say, I took it with me to a recent vacation in the Austrian alps. While experimenting, I had two interesting insights that I thought I should document here: Message time context and where around the … Continue reading When All Else Fails – The Garmin InReach Mini 2 – Part 10 – Some More Notes
In part 8 on this series on the Garmin InReach Mini 2 and the Iridium network behind it, I’ve assembled a summary of the few pieces of technical background information that is available on the Internet. Iridium offers a number of different services such as voice telephony and SMS, and quite a bit of the … Continue reading When All Else Fails – The Garmin InReach Mini 2 – Part 9 – More Iridium Tech Stuff
Ok, it’s nice to know that in case all terrestrial networks fail in my area, I will probably still be able to send and receive messages between Garmin InReach devices that use the Iridium satellite network. There are only four Iridium ground stations in the network, so it’s likely that a local or even country … Continue reading When All Else Fails – The Garmin InReach Mini 2 – Part 8 – Iridium Tech Stuff
When all else fails, my Garmin InReach Mini 2 would be the last device standing. The question then is how long I could use it before its battery runs out. On their web page, Garmin says the device has a standby time of up to 30 days (720 hours). But that’s the best case with … Continue reading When All Else Fails – The Garmin InReach Mini 2 – Part 6: Power Consumption
This might seem like a benign topic, but how does one compose text messages on the Garmin InReach Mini 2? As you can see above, the device has no keyboard, not even digit keys at the front. This is quite intentional, as I wanted to have a device that is as small and as light … Continue reading When All Else Fails – The Garmin InReach Mini 2 – Part 5: Composing Messages
In this part of the ‘When All Else Fails’ series, I’ll have a look how the Garmin InReach Mini 2 works in urban scenarios. The device is advertised as a satellite communication tool for adventurers in the wilderness, which is quite a different environment compared to my use case in mostly urban canyons. As I … Continue reading When All Else Fails – The Garmin InReach Mini 2 – Part 4: Will It Work In Urban Environments?
In this part, I’d like to muse a bit on Garmin’s pricing of the InReach service for my use-case and the general procedure of sending and receiving messages. While Garmin’s main application for InReach is outdoor communication and tracking in the wilderness, my use-case is to be able to communicate with far away family members … Continue reading When All Else Fails – The Garmin InReach Mini 2 – Part 3: Pricing and Message Handling