Heads Up on Your Inreach

[Rob Patuto]

I may be an idiot, quite possible, but maybe this will help someone in the future.

I have had a mini for a couple years, recently I renewed my subscription prepping for a trip as usual. All systems go, test the device get dropped off in The Frank Church and bam, nothing. I could receive via my email account and receive other inreach addresses but I could not send anything. I could use testinreach and it would come back like it was functional. 7 days and I could not get a message out.

Come to find out I needed to update the software. It never mentioned that on my account, or anywhere else for that matter. The help desk was helpful but they could not tell me where I should have seen a notification of this. So apparently the testinreach function doesnt mean crap. Firmware is 2.80.

 

[Dustin the wind]

Good to know, thanks for the heads up

 

[Dennis]

Thanks for the heads up. An important detail.

 

[idahohikker]

Good to know. How was your Frank trip?

 

[rob86jeep]

Good tip. I usually send a test text to whomever I want to have contact with me so they can just reply to that message. Hopefully Garmin will look into that though.

 

[208blake]

Thanks for the info. Glad you made it out okay. Frank Church is wild country. How long have you been running the inreach? What plan do you usually go with?

 

[mtwarden]

thanks!

I didn't have any problems last trip into the Bob (2 weeks ago), but figured I'd check as I have another trip into the Bob next week and lo and behold, I required an update!

 

[roosiebull]

how do you do the update?

i appreciate the heads up, that's an important detail

 

[Gunnersdad49]

I usually charge mine off of the computer prior to a trip. That auto-opens my garmin file updater and it lets me know if I need any updates. Scary that yours refused to work when you needed it, but it just proves that any technology can and will typically fail at the worst possible time.

 

[bsnedeker]

how do you do the update?

i appreciate the heads up, that's an important detail

You need to plug it into your PC and fire up Garmin Express. I just updated mine, been carrying it for the entire turkey/bear season without knowing it was a brick! That is a horrible design!

 

[mtwarden]

on my Mac you have to first download the inReach Sync app, open app and plug inReach into computer- should ask you if you want to update- click yes and it will start the process

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=Y9KTmc33gk70hJwVn5ErO8

 

[roosiebull]

You need to plug it into your PC and fire up Garmin Express. I just updated mine, been carrying it for the entire turkey/bear season without knowing it was a brick! That is a horrible design!

thank you, that needs to be addressed

 

[mtwarden]

mine wasn't a brick and worked fine two weeks ago, but there was an update that I loaded this morning

would be nice to get an email with needed updates

 

[camping1601]

Just this weekend mine would only send presets and wouldn't text from my phone with the app. I'll try the update.

 

[roosiebull]

I just did mine and had version 2.1 before the update, didn't have any idea we were supposed to update. wonder how often we are supposed to

 

[Scrappy]

I plug mine in every year before trip to check for updates. Easy to do.

 

[John Kimble]

Thank you

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

 

[MTSasquatch]

I may be an idiot, quite possible, but maybe this will help someone in the future.

I have had a mini for a couple years, recently I renewed my subscription prepping for a trip as usual. All systems go, test the device get dropped off in The Frank Church and bam, nothing. I could receive via my email account and receive other inreach addresses but I could not send anything. I could use testinreach and it would come back like it was functional. 7 days and I could not get a message out.

Come to find out I needed to update the software. It never mentioned that on my account, or anywhere else for that matter. The help desk was helpful but they could not tell me where I should have seen a notification of this. So apparently the testinreach function doesnt mean crap. Firmware is 2.80.

Thanks for the heads up

 

[NEhunter]

Thanks for the info on this, just turned mine on today after seeing this and found that it wouldn’t take updates. After about an hour on the phone with garmin troubleshooting, they’re sending me a new one. Would hate to have had this happen right before heading out somewhere.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Westside]

This thread will save someone some grief, my personal policy will change after reading this, can't remember last time mine was plugged into PC, doing it today now though.