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Emergency SOS via satellite

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Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#311

Post by fragmede »

jrnichols wrote: post #280

I'm a Paramedic in Northern California and am VERY happy about this feature. Even in some of our SF Bay Area counties, we have a lot of windy mountain roads with no cell service at all. Our portable radios don't even work up in the hills. To have an iPhone be able to send GPS location to the public safety access point is fabulous. Our dispatchers can at least drop a pin on a map and we can route to that location ours…

> Even in some of our SF Bay Area counties

Even? no (and you'd probably know better than me) but as a fellow bay area person, there are tons and tons and tons of roads and places that aren't covered by cell service, just go into the mountains a little bit. and then you also have to ask which cell carrier everybody has. there's a real digital divide once you get out of the city and the towns that surround it

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#312

Post by ghaff »

tjohns wrote: post #256
ghaff wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>PLB users generally do trust that their devices work the first time they're used for real, and this trust is backed up by a lot of real world use. Although they are not foolproof. See for example the story of Kate Matrosova. [1] Basically, mountain shadows made the location readings erratic which, in combination with extremely bad weather, meant rescuers couldn't find her. [1] https://www3.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015…

The person in that article was using SPOT, not a PLB. Actual PLBs ( not SPOT) have a backup strategy in the event the GPS signal is obscured by mountains. If the device can't get a reliable GPS fix, the satellites will resort to measuring doppler shift as they pass overhead to locate the transmitter. It's slower (takes several passes of the satellite, so we're talking hours) and less accurate, but it will get rescuer…

Thanks for the info. Although, in general, I assume a device that allows you to have two-way communications with SAR is preferable even if a PLB might have been better in this ultimately fatal situation.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#313

Post by kawfey »

vikR0001 wrote: post #92

How can a little iPhone possibly have enough power to transmit data all the distance to a satellite?

iPhone satellite SOS communicates to a constellation of 24 GlobalStar Gen 2 Low Earth Orbit satellites, orbiting somewhere between 800 and 1000mi[0]. This is the same satellite system that SPOT messengers talk to (which are also tiny devices)[1].

The user points the phone at the satellite (in reality, the UI tells the user where to put the phone in relation to it's measured antenna pattern to maximize the gain towards the nearest satellite), while the satellite has a huge, very very high gain antenna array to pick up the signal and pass it back down to a ground station. iPhones can output up to 2 watts of RF power, which is enough for a tiny message. It's using 5G NR band 53 [2][3]

I'm sure someone out there has already run a linkbudget and posted it to their blog, but I haven't found it yet.

[0] https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/globalstar-2.htm

[1] https://www.findmespot.com/en-us/products-services/spot-gen4

[2] https://gearjunkie.com/news/apple-iphone-satellite-messaging...

[3] https://itecspec.com/band/nr-band-n53/

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#314

Post by brewdad »

sevenf0ur wrote: post #227
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.

I have both an inReach and an iPhone 14. Haven't made a decision yet myself if I will keep it. Some pros for the inReach: 1. It's nice to have a backup. 2. The battery life on the inReach is upwards of a month and it's more rugged. 3. You can throw it in your pack, forget about it, and somehow it stills gets a signal. 3. Garmin has a dedicated communications center (IERCC) that has tons of experience coordinating wit…

I see the InReach as the system to use if you are an avid outdoors-person. This setup is well suited to the millions who took up hiking as a way to get out of the house during Covid and now maybe go out to the wilderness a couple times a summer but don't fully grasp the risks that can be out there.

Another use case: The there are two highways between my metro area and the Pacific coast. Both are pretty remote through the forest. One has decent coverage with only a couple of mile long dropouts along the way. The other road has essentially zero cell coverage for about 20 miles and spotty coverage for another 20 miles. Winter travelers have gone off the road and not been found for hours or even days. This device could certainly save a life in that case.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#315

Post by whimsicalism »

fragmede wrote: post #311
jrnichols wrote: post #280

I'm a Paramedic in Northern California and am VERY happy about this feature. Even in some of our SF Bay Area counties, we have a lot of windy mountain roads with no cell service at all. Our portable radios don't even work up in the hills. To have an iPhone be able to send GPS location to the public safety access point is fabulous. Our dispatchers can at least drop a pin on a map and we can route to that location ours…

> Even in some of our SF Bay Area counties Even? no (and you'd probably know better than me) but as a fellow bay area person, there are tons and tons and tons of roads and places that aren't covered by cell service, just go into the mountains a little bit. and then you also have to ask which cell carrier everybody has. there's a real digital divide once you get out of the city and the towns that surround it

> and then you also have to ask which cell carrier everybody has

Not for emergency services you don't.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#316

Post by post_break »

ingalls wrote: post #201
COGlory wrote: post #123

I was just on the ground coordinating with 4 friends that got buried in 5+ foot of unexpected snow in the mountains (forecast said 1"-2" when they went up) for the rifle opener in Montana. I wound up getting sick so I stayed home (hilariously I was the only one who got an elk) but I sent them up with my InReach. All I can say is THANK GOD that I did, because it turned into over a week long effort to get them out. Two…

First off, super glad to hear your friends are out of the field safe. Want to address one point however: "The SOS button is very expensive. Extremely expensive" In my experience on multiple SAR teams (Search and Rescue), this is almost never the case in North America. Search and Rescue is one of the few services that is almost uniformly free [1]. Thousands and thousands of volunteer hours every year keep it that way.…

Check this video out about that being free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u49b-_cWlz8

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#317

Post by tyingq »

yurishimo wrote: post #296
tyingq wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At some point iPhone and Apple Watch will probably be marketed as the devices you need if you don't wish to die early. Or you'll have to turn over your data to get the reasonable health insurance rates and not fall in the risky rate bucket.

God forbid the US become a civilized nation and offer a real competitive national healthcare options. I live in one of the more expensive European nations when it comes to healthcare. €100~/mo with a €400~ deductible per year. Worst case scenario, I spend €1600/yr on healthcare.

Yep. If your employer isn't subsidizing it for you, €1600/month (not a year) for a good employee+family plan would be a bargain in the US. And the deductible would still be thousands, not hundreds.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#318

Post by jsjohnst »

ingalls wrote: post #201
COGlory wrote: post #123

I was just on the ground coordinating with 4 friends that got buried in 5+ foot of unexpected snow in the mountains (forecast said 1"-2" when they went up) for the rifle opener in Montana. I wound up getting sick so I stayed home (hilariously I was the only one who got an elk) but I sent them up with my InReach. All I can say is THANK GOD that I did, because it turned into over a week long effort to get them out. Two…

First off, super glad to hear your friends are out of the field safe. Want to address one point however: "The SOS button is very expensive. Extremely expensive" In my experience on multiple SAR teams (Search and Rescue), this is almost never the case in North America. Search and Rescue is one of the few services that is almost uniformly free [1]. Thousands and thousands of volunteer hours every year keep it that way.…

> Search and Rescue is one of the few services that is almost uniformly free

Just wanted to come and confirm based on first hand experience that this is true and also say a heart felt thank you for doing what you do!

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#319

Post by robbiep »

FireBeyond wrote: post #308
Hippocrates wrote: post #207

Apple is building up a nice portfolio of life-saving features. Currently we have fall detection, a-fib detection, crash detection, satellite communication. These are all solid value-adds and differentiators from the competition. I'm not sure if they amount to a strong selling point for _everyone_ yet, but I'm sure that's where Apple is headed. I am extremely bullish on Apple's ability to measure health signals in the…

> a-fib detection As a paramedic, not a physician, atrial fibrillation is not a life threatening event. Many people happily live with it for decades, unmedicated. It is more problematic if you are diabetic or hypertensive, but still not an acute medical event.

As a doctor, the proliferation of apple (and other) watch ECGs has done nothing positive but lead to a massive proliferation of severe health anxiety. Go take a look at /r/askdocs for anyone curious - dozens of apple and Samsung ECG questions, people sure they’re about to die. They have nothing.

I remain entirely unconvinced that putting ‘more’ health information at increased temporal frequency to consumers leads to any health benefit, and instead causes significant health anxiety and drain on health resources with false and misleading presentations for bad signals.

Re: Emergency SOS via satellite

#320

Post by ghaff »

MarkMarine wrote: post #287
pests wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I notice we have a lot of SAR people in this thread so question for everyone: Is it wrong to call for help when you are lost only 300 yards off trail like you said? I would be embarrassed - but is anyone going to be upset?

Not wrong, it’s never wrong to call for help if you need help. Call early before you’re hypothermic, dehydrated and your cell battery is dead. A lot of my buddies rescues are older people who just got a little lost, or slipped down a steep embankment and can’t get back up. The worst ones are when that happens, but it’s been 3 days and the chances they find a live person are more slim. The SAR people vastly prefer fin…

Yeah, it doesn't take much. People should be in better shape with smartphones in their pockets but I wonder how many even think about the compass or have downloaded maps if they aren't in cellphone coverage. And it's not like the commercial map providers are all that good with mapping trails.

Absent some combination of map and compass--in some form--it's super-easy to get totally disoriented absent trail and landmarks. Long before cell phones, I still remember going on a casual short off-trail jaunt to a lighthouse in Nova Scotia and suddenly realizing I really didn't know where I was. Took a deep breath, carefully figured things out, and I was fine (the boundaries were pretty constrained anyway). But it's not hard.

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