User incapacitated ...

Is there a way for family or emergency contacts to find a user if he/she had not enabled tracking, had not pressed SOS, and cannot send location i.e. what happens if disabled/kidnapped/etc

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twolpert over 1 year ago +2

This is a four year old post. I don't remember where the duplicate was.

There is no reliable way to determine position if you are not tracking, have not pressed SOS, and have not sent any messages…
twolpert over 1 year ago in reply to Like2Hike +1

To my way of thinking, the worst case cost on any plan is $0.10 (US) per track point. $0.60 per hour. Maybe $5 for a day of tracking. This is cheap insurance against serious injury or death.

There ARE…
Like2Hike over 1 year ago in reply to twolpert +1

Agreed.

I did conduct a small test of Locate User here at the house, and it worked fine. I waited a half hour from send time to manually check for messages. Checking caused my location to show up on Mapshare…

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0 skyeye over 1 year ago in reply to skyeye

so, today I had time to make first test in this. Using Delorme Explorer, I sent a point and then switched all tracking and all automatic message checks etc OFF.

Then moved some 4km. During that time I did 5 manual mail checks. Those appear also in the explore website. However the position arrow did not move at all, meaning the explore website did not get any information about position change of the device. The position could be observed on the device during the test, gps did work still and the arrow on the 'pseudo map' on the delorme device did move.

So it looks like that mail check alone does not provide any information to garmin abt the location.

I will make other tests when I have time, but I think they will give similar results.

Sure, Iridium knows approximate position as it knows which satellite and which spot beam was used during the communication, but I do not think they deliver this info to customers unless they are some very special customers. But still this might be a circle of 100km or more diameter.

0 1874793 over 1 year ago in reply to Like2Hike

A timely reply to a “Locate User” request would require not only that the device be “ON”, but also NOT in the ‘sleep mode’ between sending Tracking Points (i.e. Extended Tracking-XT) either.

Bill R.