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Emergency SOS via satellite

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Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#71

Post by davidwihl »

teeray wrote: post #17

If you’re looking for emergency comms where cell service is unavailable, you can do really well with a 2m/70cm Baofeng UV-5R. It’ll run you like $60 between the technician’s license (easy to get) and the radio, no subscription. From mountains (no service), I’ve gotten into repeaters 60 miles away. Knowing the community on those frequencies, they’ll treat your emergency with the same respect and decorum as those submi…

Getting that sort of range is not common. Most of it is line of sight. Sat comms work far at sea where VHF is useless. With ARES, you are relying on an inconsistent volunteer network with spotty results by location and time.

I'm a licensed ham and have worked emergency events. I would not rely upon this if my life depended on it.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#72

Post by Kye »

closewith wrote: post #24
tony_cannistra wrote: post #7

I'm glad to see that they at least talked to some IRL dispatchers for this press release, which hopefully suggests that they've been doing it all along. But really, I desperately hope that we can find a way to educate folks on the proper usage of technology like this (which, if you count things like the Garmin inReach and the Spot devices, has been available for a decade). They're undoubtedly life saving, but they al…

I'm a search and rescue medic and I volunteer (although not in the States), but would have the exact opposite outlook on this. Better comms may lead to more shouts but it will definitely lead to better outcomes for casualties. We always prefer calls to come in as early as possible, where maybe an issue can be resolved with advice or a daylight shout to an warm, ambulatory casualty in mild distress. That will always b…

I think it's similar to how injury stats are up in auto accidents. It looks bad if you misread the data, but it's wonderful with proper context that safety features, first response, and treatment are saving more lives. So many of those shouts are people who would have died in an earlier era.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#73

Post by ghaff »

Cass wrote: post #51
sschueller wrote: post #37

Quoted post unavailable.

This isn't meant for heli-skiers who go out with a few thousand bucks of equipment. None of the average hikers I know own a satellite phone, plenty of them like to hike alone, and an hour of walking into the woods (hardly a strenuous hike) will frequently land you somewhere with patchy service (and this is in a country with perfectly well-functioning infrastructure, not the middle of the Rocky Mountains.) I'm sure th…

I live fifty miles west of a major Northeast city and cell phone is patchy at my house without WiFi assist. I'm sure there tons of spots within an hour drive of my house where I hike that have patchy cell service.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#74

Post by mrtksn »

papito wrote: post #9

This is great, but people do still need to keep in mind that this is not a full replacement of the emergency beacons that use the Cospas-Sarsat system, which would work anywhere, from pole to pole. If you are going to do extreme hiking in Patagonia, get a real distress beacon. There is no service charge except for the device itself. This is no joke - I had to use mine in the middle of Death Valley (of all places) dur…

Just like with Apple Watch Ultra, Its for people with serious hobbies but not professionals or those on the extreme end. I think they have a name for that market segment.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#75

Post by CarbonCycles »

Alex3917 wrote: post #30
wstrange wrote: post #21

This is really going to eat into Garmin's Inreach market (ditto for Spot, Zoleo, etc). It says free for the first 2 years. I'm curious what the yearly cost will be after that, and how it will compare to an Inreach plan. On an ongoing basis, it's the subscription fees that really add up.

The bigger threat to Garmin is probably just the new GPS. There are probably a lot of folks who will now put off buying their first bike computer for a couple years now that an iPhone with Strava is going to be almost as accurate as an Edge 530 or whatever. Having a real bike computer is still going to be better, but by significantly less than it was a year ago.

Garmin has already released the new GPS chipset that uses multiband (similar to Apples).

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=9NWiPDU4gM0JWMfdWFol7A

The new GPS chipsets are absolutely a beast in challenging conditions and incredibly accurate/precise over the older technology.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#76

Post by alphakilo »

wstrange wrote: post #21

This is really going to eat into Garmin's Inreach market (ditto for Spot, Zoleo, etc). It says free for the first 2 years. I'm curious what the yearly cost will be after that, and how it will compare to an Inreach plan. On an ongoing basis, it's the subscription fees that really add up.

Echoing others, I don't think this will have a huge impact as iPhone SOS is a last resort for those who are unprepared

Garmin inReach is a robust and rugged satellite communicator that out classes iPhone emergency SOS greatly

- inreach doesn't require "tracking" the satellite as it has a stronger antenna - inreach is more waterproof, dust proof atd shock resistant (no touch screen) - inreach has higher battery life, SOS can be activated while the device is off - ability to send messages, which can be critical if there are no cell towers that can be boosned/activated

That said, it is a great innovation; I think the Apple Watch Ultra will cut more into the diving watch market than the iPhone into the satellite communicator market

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#77

Post by kotaKat »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #26
Centrino wrote: post #5

The article doesn't mention which satellites or which satellite provider is used. But Apple invested $450 million in Globalstar. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/11/emergency-sos-via-sat...

I was really wondering what kind of satellite-based emergency SOS they were using -- mostly because I'd never heard of it until it was being shipped in a commercial product, which is something very rare to see. So basically, they have their own infrastructure for their own proprietary 911 service with global coverage? It's really amazing that we live in a world where we can have such infrastructure, but at the same t…

It's basically running on the same system as their current SPOT trackers in the S- and L-band. L-band up, S-band down.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#78

Post by kotaKat »

pqdbr wrote: post #27

From the article: > A text compression algorithm was also developed to reduce the average size of messages by 300 percent I don't think that's how percentages work.

I suspect the algorithm is just the frontloaded questions they ask you -- of course they can shrink all that down into a handful of bytes and unpack it on the other end as "car crash, 3 people, injuries reported, lat/long".

So the percentage "works", in a way, until you get to the freeform text.

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