Related

In reach mini 2 has horrible battery life

Kurtedward
over 2 years ago

I just got my new inreach mini 2 a few days ago and have set it to track my progress to and from work for a few days now. I turned off the satellite feed so it doesn't send. After about 10 hours its down to about 30% consistently over the last 3 days. The device travels with me in my car and then sits in my coat pocket inside the building for the rest of the day. My inteach mini one seemingly got better battery life than the two does. Am I doing something wrong? There's not a whole lot of settings to change.

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    Is the M2 powered up in your coat pocket inside the building? If so, this will deplete the battery. There are several reasons for this. The biggest is probably the fact that it attempts to retrieve messages once an hour. It will not be able to do so inside the building. But it will (re)try very, very hard to make it happen. This is a huge battery suck.

    I doubt that the M1 behaves any differently in the same circumstances.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to twolpert

    is there a way to turn off the satellite radio? I know with the Mini V1 it would take forever to get a GPS lock before it would send a message. Sometimes I would send a message at the car then when I stopped for lunch 2 or 3 hours later, I would hear the unit finally send that first message. At least the Mini V2 gets a GPS lock much, much faster and even inside the house. That alone is worth the price of admission. The only thing missing is background TOPO maps, Wish they would have added just a little extra memory to load that along with a course.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Kurtedward

    If you don't mind my asking: why don't you just turn the device off completely when indoors? You won't get any Iridium reception inside, and GPS will be spotty at best (and besides: you probably know where you are already when you're at work). Could you describe which functionality it is that you expect from the Mini 2?

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Kurtedward

    You cannot disable the hourly message check. You can (and apparently did) disable sent points. 

    To avoid all use of the Iridium radio, you must power the device off.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to twolpert

    thanks for your help. I wasn't planning on using the device indoors but was looking for a way to turn off the extra power consumption while backpacking. I don't ever need for the unit to check for incoming messages only to send messages and that may explain the V1 battery issues that I had, especially for multi-day outings. That would be a good firmware update though!? It has always seemed to me there isn't enough user-adjustable setting on these devices. But they do work and do what they are supposed to do, keeping in touch. My Mini 1 has over 2000 miles on it and I would never hike without it, good piece of mind.

  • 0 1 month ago in reply to Kurtedward

    I use the Orbit app on my cell phone to see when an Iridium satellite is overhead. It makes sending messages a lot less random.