SMS messages not going through, Mapshare not working

I recently went on a hike, and the hike ended up being about 7 hours longer than expected. I sent my wife a message through my inreach mini via SMS to her cell phone, and she never received it. The inReach mini confirmed that it had sent the message, but when I finished the hike around midnight and finally got cell reception I realized my wife had never in fact received the message. She had contacted the authorities and they were ready to send out search and rescue. I was able to receive the message that she sent me while I was hiking on my inReach Mini, she asked if everything was okay. I replied, and once again the Mini verified that my reply message was sent to her. She never received that one either. Once I got home I sent out test messages, and the ones that were sent out, via email addresses and SMS, were working. Today I was trouble shooting the unit, and i sent out a test message to multiple different email accounts. Two people were able to respond via the link in the email, but the third email message contained a link that sent the recipient to a Garmin website that would not load. Seemed like the Garmin Mapshare website goes down occasionally? I am currently in the Middle East, and would appreciate any advice on how to get My InReach to work properly to send a message via SMS, or if there are technical things I need to know. Thanks for any help!

0 Garmin-Andrew over 4 years ago

Have you synced and updated your inReach Mini? The inReach Mini should be on software version 2.80. This article has information if your messages aren't being received by contacts, and ensuring your inReach Mini has been synced with the inReach Sync Desktop app is very important. inReach Messages Not Received by Contacts.

If syncing and updating doesn't get the messages to come through, please send me a PM and I'd be happy to help you with this. I'll need to confirm some account details to investigate this further.

0 Brian over 4 years ago in reply to Garmin-Andrew

Thanks for the response. I see I have firmware 2.60. I will work on updating it and run some tests again to see if that fixes the issue.

0 MTINAUDIO over 4 years ago in reply to Garmin-Andrew

I have the 2.80 firmware in my Mini , it is synced and never sends or receives SMS in Argentina .

Only thru Mapshare.Please fix it . Will be nice that it works. Is clear like water that Garmin is having a lot of troubles with SMS carries ,worldwide

0 Brian over 4 years ago in reply to Garmin-Andrew

I updated the firmware to the latest, and synced the Mini. I was able to send an SMS to a phone, but he could not reply back using SMS. I was able to send out messages from my Mini to email addresses, and they were received. However, today, a week later, I tried sending to SMS phone numbers, email addresses and Mapshare. The Mini confirmed that all messages were sent, however the only on that actually was delivered was the one sent to the Mapshare. The messages sent to the SMS number and the email did not work. It seems that the only sure way of communication is sending messages to Mapshare. SMS and email messaging with this device has not been dependable or consistent for me. Any advice?

0 twolpert over 4 years ago in reply to Brian

The fact that the Mini says it was sent means almost nothing. The communication path from the device to the recipient is Mini > Iridium satellite network > Iridium ground station > Garmin servers. From there, the path depends on the recipient type. SMS goes Garmin servers > third-party SMS gateway > cell network > user's phone. Email goes direct from Garmin servers to the Internet for delivery.

When the Mini says that the message was sent, all it knows is that it made it to the Iridium satellite network.

The first thing to check is the Inbox on your account at explore.garmin.com. If the messages appear there, then they made it as far as the Garmin servers. If not, the problem is somewhere on the Mini (which might be incorrect about the send status), in the Iridium network, or on the Garmin servers themselves.

Note: If one of the messages made it to MapShare, then that one (at least) made it to the servers. However, that does not prove that any of the other messages made it that far.

If the messages made it to the Garmin servers, it's possible that there is a problem with the recipient address(es). This is particularly likely if you selected a "contact" (from the contacts on the Mini) as the recipient. When you do this, the Mini does not send the full address. Instead, it sends a short code. The Mini and the Garmin servers must agree on the meaning of the short code. In order for this to work, you must sync after EVERY change to the contact list on the web site. Otherwise, messages may not be delivered at all, or may be delivered to the wrong recipient.

There have not been any recent general outages of SMS or email. So the problem is most likely local to your device/account. I would check out the Inbox so you have the information at hand, then call tech support.