How do I know when a track point has been sent?

The Mini emits a tone confirming that a message has been sent. Is there a way to confirm that a track point has been sent while I'm out in the field?

I did notice that the Earthmate app, under "messages" indicates when a message is still waiting to be sent. I also found under More/History/Today that there is a list of messages and track points, but the times shown appear to be when they are queued for transmission not when they've actually been sent. I don't see anything there that indicates when the transmission (particularly on track points) was actually relayed to the satellite network.

It's not unusual for me to be hiking under a lot of tree cover. At times this interferes with the prompt sending of messages and track points, which is to be expected. It'd be nice to know when I've been out of touch for a long period of time so I can intentionally find a clearing etc. to allow track points to send. Hopefully this is already built in somewhere and I just haven't found it yet.

--Mike

0 Boris over 3 years ago

As far as I know it is not possible to immediately know wether points have been sent or not. What you could do however is: send a test message. Once you received the reply, all messages and points in the send-queue should be sent.

0 twolpert over 3 years ago

There is no way to tell for sure. Original DeLorme devices made this information available in the UI. For example, you could see how many points/messages were waiting to be sent. Garmin "improved" this by removing all useful information from the UI.

At this point, about all you can do is to try powering the device down. If there is pending traffic, you will be warned and will have the option to NOT power down. Of course, if there is no pending traffic, you will have to power up again. And verify that you are still tracking as desired.

You can also perform an active mail check from the UI. As part of the mail check, pending outbound traffic will be sent. Be warned, however, that the active check tries VERY hard to contact the Iridium network, including extensive retries. In challenging conditions, this is a battery hog. And if conditions are bad enough, the check will fail and you still will not know if you have pending outbound traffic.

Most iR devices automatically perform an active mail check once an hour while powered on. This is a good reason NOT to bury the iR device in your pack. That's a good way to deplete the battery even when you are not actively using the device.

If your iR device pairs with the Earthmate app (as opposed to the newer Explore app), the information provided by the app regarding send status is unreliable. Since this is a legacy app, I doubt that this problem is going to be fixed. It has been that way for as long as I can remember.

0 3883462 over 3 years ago

Thank you for the replies. It's a shame that this information fell victim to "improvement".

FYI, twolpert writes "At this point, about all you can do is to try powering the device down." Well, I tested this and my Mini will happily power down with no warning about pending outbound traffic. I've verified in Earthmate that the message was pending and since I'm sitting in a basement there is no way it was going to be sent, then I powered down with no warning on the device. Earthmate does have a red exclamation point next to the message, but you have to go look for it there.

0 twolpert over 3 years ago in reply to 3883462

Don't trust what Earthmate tells you about anything.

I guess the device behavior on power down might depend on the specific device. It's been quite a while since I tested this myself. All devices used to behave as I described.

0 Bob_qx over 3 years ago in reply to twolpert

Explorer+ does notify, on being powered down, when messages or waypoints are waiting to be sent. When on, there is an animated icon indicating pending status appropriate to either message or waypoint. I can't say about tracking since I don't use that feature. Also, on the top of the Explorer+ display there will be a flashing "up-down" arrow icon to indicate when transmission is taking place, either up- or download, whether user-initiated or auto. (For me: message, message check, or waypoint)

0 3883462 over 3 years ago in reply to twolpert

I discovered that there are two ways to power down the IR Mini. I usually just hold down the power button and it quickly turns off. That way doesn't give a warning about pending messages. The other way is to press and release the power button and then scroll down to "Turn off" and press the OK button. Powering off this way does show a warning if there are pending messages to send.

0 twolpert over 3 years ago in reply to Bob_qx

This is definitely true while the iR radio is on. I have never been sure if the radio stays on continuously during message retry. If it does not, then the absence of the "sending" icon in the status bar is not a reliable indicator.

On most iR devices, you can easily check the status of outbound messages by looking at the message thread. At some level, the icon associated with the message shows whether transmission is in progress or has been completed. I don't know if the sent point history shows the same distinction or not. Note that the icon on the device is much more reliable than the status in the Earthmate app..