A Litany of InReach Mini Woes: Poorly Designed Garmin Site

To save other people the trouble I ran into, please be aware that the Garmin site (or at least the portion of it dedicated to the Mini) is not very well designed, and contains misleading information in various places. The lesson being, if something doesn't work the way it should, don't assume you did something wrong: you may be following directions, only the directions aren't right.

Case in point: I synced the Mini several times after activating it using the Sync button on the Sync page for the InReach devices (this was after installing the necessary Windows drivers/software, as directed by the Sync page).

The sync process (when I finally got it to work; it took several tries) displayed icons and graphics indicating that it was "determining needed updates" and other such things that would seem to imply that, in fact, the firmware was being evaluated and found up to date.

Unfortunately, that's not at all the case, as I discovered (in the course of wrestling with why my Mini fails to deliver 3 out of every 4 messages I send through the Earthmate app) when I noticed that the Mini's firmware was stuck at 2.2 when the latest release is 2.6. Turns out you have to download and use a different software package to update the Mini's firmware. Search for Garmin Express and follow the directions for installing and using it.

Personally, I think it's nuts that Garmin hasn't updated the graphics on the Sync site to show that, in fact, the firmware >>isn't<< being updated. Then again, there are a whole host of problems, inconsistencies and gotchas scattered around the Garmin website. I guess they could only afford to hire inexperienced, part-time website developers :).

Anyway, be forewarned: you can't rely on the directions and indicators being correct.

Top Replies

twolpert over 5 years ago +1

There is a relatively easy way to handle visibility of tracks on MapShare. On the Social tab of your account at explore.garmin.com, click the Filter MapShare Data button.

The most straightforward thing…

All Replies

0 Element58 over 5 years ago

I think part of the problem is most of the site dedicated to inReach was and still is the Delorme infrastructure (that they acquired). Many people still have Delorme branded units and the Mini is really the first real Garmin hardware effort. I know because I had a Delorme before Garmin took over and little has changed. Thats my .02

0 ChairmanMAO over 5 years ago

I could see that. But given that the Mini is fairly useless without a website to register/configure/update it, they should've done a better job with the site. Leaving it more or less as is when launching a new product which doesn't quite "fit" the existing site is a good way to turn off the new customers you're hoping to attract with the new product.

Thanx for the feedback/perspective.

0 ChairmanMAO over 5 years ago

LOL! Continuing Garmin's track record of badly configured or designed websites, I've just tried, three times, to send the following to you as a private message, Element58. After being notified that I couldn't do that until I changed my settings to allow private messaging, I did just that...only to find that doing so, and saving the changes, had absolutely no effect -- the site just blithely threw away my changes and reverted to "no private messaging". I even tried making the change, and then logging out and logging back in. Same result. Wow!

I wonder if these guys have >>anything<< that actually works? :)

Anyway, here's what I tried to message you:

Hi, it's ChairmanMAO (we corresponded on the InReach Mini forum today). I was curious if you've run into the kind of message latency/message delivery failure problems that I've encountered with the Mini. Frankly, they're so severe that I can't imagine people actually buying an InReach device to use in the real world...which makes me think something is wrong with my unit, my configuration of it, or something else.

0 twolpert over 5 years ago

Delivery routes for firmware updates are a work in progress. I agree that the inreach.garmin.com web site is confusing. However, I doubt that this has much to do with DeLorme vs. Garmin. Things change, and Garmin is not always on top of letting people know they've changed.

The forum issues are a long-standing problem. Garmin has basically given up on making vBulletin forum software work. Sometime soon (although soon is soft, squishy term in forum-land) they are replacing it yet again. Hopefully the new software will work better.

Meantime, do keep in mind that this is a peer to peer forum. Garmin employees sometimes read it and (very) infrequently post. If you really need action on a problem, a call to tech support is your best bet.

0 ChairmanMAO over 5 years ago

Meantime, do keep in mind that this is a peer to peer forum. Garmin employees sometimes read it and (very) infrequently post. If you really need action on a problem, a call to tech support is your best bet.

I'm aware of that. My intent is to alert any casual passers by -- either to the forum itself or via search engine results -- that they should be prepared to be frustrated, confused and annoyed :).

0 bc0123 over 5 years ago

I feel your pain. I'm continually going to their website to manually delete tracks. When I share my location before heading out the old tracks just confuse the people I'm relying on to track/monitor me.

It's a minor issue but the repeated poke in the eye of doing it (or the complaints if I forget to) have rubbed me a little raw.

I find the site overall very confusing. Using it with "other" devices, adding devices, etc is impossible to navigate.

0 twolpert over 5 years ago

There is a relatively easy way to handle visibility of tracks on MapShare. On the Social tab of your account at explore.garmin.com, click the Filter MapShare Data button.

The most straightforward thing to do is to set the start date under the heading Hide Older MapShare Data. Typically, I set this at the start of each trip. That way, only data for this trip shows up.

If you are into the whole "collections" thing, you can also manage this with one collection per trip. After you create the new collection and link it up properly, you can use the section Make Collections Visible on MapShare to limit it to the collection for the current trip. This always seems a lot more complicated to me than setting the date. But it does work. If you do change collections frequently, you do need to remember to change these settings anyway.

Don't forget to click Save Changes at the bottom of the pop-up after you set the date or adjust the visible collections.

For personal accounts (which I assume is what you have), you can effectively have only one iR device per account. The site does torture you a bit making that apparent, but that's the bottom line.

"Other devices" is a bit odd. Not making excuses here - it really does require you to understand more than a little about the whole Garmin ecosystem. The ecosystem is made up of a bunch of what appear to be independent Garmin properties - explore.garmin.com, connect.garmin.com, mygarmin.garmin.com, etc. Some of these have related mobile applications like the Explore app, Garmin Connect mobile app, etc.

These properties are not really independent. They are all tied together by Garmin single signon. When you are signed into one of these properties (explore.garmin.com in our case), you are also signed into any of the others which you might visit (mygarmin.garmin.com in our example here). And in a lot of cases, creating an account at one of the Garmin properties will also create one on some of the other properties. This is supposed to make things simpler for you - and it does as long as you don't think too hard about what's happening under the hood. And as long as you only have ONE set of Garmin credentials (or, if you do have multiple accounts, you only sign into one at a time on a given browser platform).

Usually, there is more than one way to handle something like adding a device. I have two devices on my explore.garmin.com account - an iR device and an F5X+ watch. I honestly don't remember how I added the watch. Pretty sure I did it via the Garmin Connect mobile app and the Explore mobile app (probably with help from the Garmin Express desktop program - see below). Based on what I am seeing on the explore.garmin.com site (when I click Add Other Device), it looks like I could register a new device on the resulting mygarmin.garmin.com page and it would appear in my explore.garmin.com account.

Assuming, of course, that the device is compatible with the Explore site. Most new devices are compatible. Many older devices are not.

There are other odd warts that don't exactly fit the single signon model. Garmin Express is a desktop application that you use, among other things, to register devices and get firmware updates. Garmin Express does not require you to sign in. And it maintains information about "known" devices on the PC itself, not via online accounts. But there are places where it does interact with the whole signon ecosystem. For example, when you register a device, it will require an account under which to register it. Pretty sure it says this is a Garmin Connect account, but the information about the device spreads all over the ecosystem.

As I said, it doesn't pay to think too hard about this stuff.