Track without sending?

Is it possible to record a track without sending all the points? I'd like to use my Inreach (SE) to track my route pretty closely but have no particular desire (and don't want to spend the cash) to send all those track points to anyone in particular. I just want to be able to download them at the end of the trip so I can see where I've been, with pretty good resolution. A "regular" GPS can do this, of course, but as long as I've got the InReach along for safety and routine communication, I thought I'd try to save some weight...

My first post; hope I've done everything right...
  • Set the send interval to none/never (whatever it says). Set the logging interval to your preferred interval. No track points will be sent by satellite. The logged points will only appear on the inreach.garmin.com web site after a sync. You can do a wired sync using a USB connection to a PC or an OTA syn using the free Earthmate app for iOS or Android. For an OTA sync, you don't need cell service when you record the logged points, but you do need it to sync.
  • If I recall correctly, each plan restricts the logging interval that can be sent. i.e. a point every two minutes etc. If that is the case and you set the log interval to say 10 sec, I am guessing it would log your 10 sec interval to the device but only transmit a single log point every two minutes. I am not running a plan at the moment otherwise I would give it a try. As I said in another post, I was in Mongolia and I did think of doing that bar the amount of battery it would have used over 3 weeks of traveling.
  • ...As I said in another post, I was in Mongolia and I did think of doing that bar the amount of battery it would have used over 3 weeks of traveling.


    Thanks for the suggestions! I'll give 'em a try right away, though my plan is on standby at the moment. But the battery question occurred to me too, as you might expect. I'm thinking of tracking during a 1-week trip, and of course I could turn the Inreach off at night and during long stops. Any idea whether it's likely to make it that long with a logging interval of less than one minute?
  • The plan restrictions apply to the send interval, not the logged interval. Sent points are the ones that are transmitted via the Iridium satellite network. Those are the ones that are charged against your plan - and the ones to which the interval restrictions apply. Logged points are not sent via the satellite network. So they are not charged against the plan, nor are they subject to interval limitations.

    I wasn't able to find any Garmin claims for battery life for the SE. Information for the SE+ is here: https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/inreachse-explorer-plus/EN-US/GUID-FE4B4A41-0317-4826-A52F-54049B5A7E0A.html

    However, the SE has a slightly smaller battery and is a completely different device. At a guess, it would be marginal for a one-week trip. Best try before you go. Do note that windowsill testing with a stationary device is not representative of real-world performance. The device will notice that it's not moving and decrease the sending/logging interval to 4 hours. So you will get unrealistically good battery life.

    Most people who do long trips carry some means of recharging the device. Solar chargers are popular, but some folks carry a battery pack for recharging.
  • Thanks much, twolpert. It really is an SE+; sorry, I was being sloppy. The device actually puts a warning on the screen as soon as the tracking interval gets below 1 minute, to the effect that the GPS is on continuously for all those shorter intervals. Obviously I need to do a good deal of playing around with the thing on my daily walks to get a better idea of battery life in semi-real-world situations. I'll post what I discover, if people are interested.
  • OK, I tried this with no active subscription, the track interval set at 10 sec, and send off (of course), checked out the battery drain (minimal, at least for a two-hour walk in my location), but I don't see my track on my map page at inreach.garmin.com after I sync. I can see it on the screen on the InReach, but of course that's not what I want. Any suggestions?
  • When you say "no active subscription", do you mean that you have a Freedom plan which is current suspended or that you have no plan at all. I've never tried to use the device at all without an active subscription. If I had to guess, the legged point sync MIGHT work with a suspended Freedom plan subscription. But it has NO chance of working if the device is not activate (no plan at all). In that case, you have no associated account so you can't expect it to sync at all.

    For an OTA sync, be sure you stop tracking before trying to sync. Depending on the length of the track, you may not see it at all, or you may only see the start, if you don't stop tracking first.

    If you did it OTA, be sure you are correctly logged in when you sync. The iPhone version of Earthmate tends to forget your credentials. If you get to the login page and it's blank, swipe the app closed and reopen it. Credentials should reappear if you were logged in earlier.

    Even for a wired sync, you do need to be logged into the correct account for logged points to be sync-d to the map.

    If none of that pans out, I'd call tech support.
  • Thanks for the reply, twolpert. I do have a Freedom plan that's currently suspended, and I did stop tracking. Looking at the map more closely, I see that the data for track is there: Dist. traveled, Max Speed, and so on. Moving the cursor over this field causes a subtitle "view on map" to pop up, but clicking doesn't cause the route to show up on the map. I don't usually use tracking at all, so I'm not sure exactly what to look for, but I can see roads that I walked on and roads that I did not walk on, and they all look the same... I tried converting the track to a route, and then it shows up fine, in bright blue, but when I use this for real I'll be interested in a more detailed track than the 200 points allowed for a route. So clearly the route is there, I just can't get it to show up!

    I confess I'm a little afraid that if I call support they'll tell me to get lost until I reactivate ;)
  • So, a "sent" track (the one transmitted by satellite, which you can't do right now) will show up as a series of large blue dots, one per track point, connected by straight line segments. When you sync the corresponding logged track points, each logged point shows up as a smaller blue dot. If everything is working right, the large and small blue dots will all be connected by a series of (shorter) straight line segments.

    Sometimes things don't work right. In this case, the longer straight line segments between sent points remain on the display. In extreme cases, you might even see TWO tracks in the left sidebar - one for the sent points and one for the logged points. Obviously, none of this applies here because there are only logged points.

    If the statistics are there, chances are the points are there as well. Make sure that the map filters are off, or that they include the time frame in question. Make sure that you haven't accidentally hidden the track in question. Zoom in and out in the area of the track - sometimes zoom level affects just how (or if) the track renders. If you still don't see anything, there is one more thing you can try. Use the export function on the map page to create a .gpx file. You can look at that in notepad or any similar "text" editor. It's a little bit cryptic, but you'll be able to make sense of it if the track is there.

    Armed with all that information, I would not hesitate to call tech support. While this is an unusual use case, it's not THAT unusual. Garmin has gone to a lot of trouble to make the devices themselves work without an active subscription - and the web site should work as well. If the stats are there but you can't see the track, then something is wrong somewhere.
  • The very helpful fellow at Garmin told me that the behavior that I saw—visible statistics but invisible and unexportable track—is what is to be expected when the subscription isn't active. He thought it was odd that I was able to make a route from the track, given the suspended subscription. He also said the SE+ would only hold 500 track points, but that doesn't sound right: when I set the log interval to 30 seconds, it says I have enough storage for four weeks. That's an awful lot more than 500 track points, even if it's assuming that I stay in one place (thus resetting the interval) all night. Even with the log interval set for 1 second, it says I have "1 days." I can't seem to find a definitive specification of track-point capacity anywhere.