I use an Edge 305. If I am laying injured in a ditch somewhere, can my Garmin unit be found by a satelite, kind of like onstar?
Not so far as I know; I’ve never seen any reference to any other communications capabilities other than those needed to receive data from the GPS satellites.
It’s not a design feature. Technically it’s probably possible (except that no-one knows your garmin’s id) but by the time anyone thought to start looking that way the battery would be long dead.
Carry a cellphone.
Most cell phones have tracking (If you activated it), so if you’re laying unconscious they can find you. With the Garmin, I don’t think they have put a unique signature on each unit to allow for that kind of feature.
Jodi
seems like that would be a nifty feature. maybe a distress button or something like that.
AFAIK, Garmins(standard GPS recievers like the Edge 305, not the phone versions) don’t transmit, they just recieve. The only emissions would be your run of the mill E-M for the electronics. Which unless you have some state of the art military tracking equipment you probably aren’t going to be able to detect for any kind of distance.
Ed
No,
Your Garmin 305 is a GPS receiver only.
Phones with GPS location typically report your location determined by a GPS receiver using the phone network to transmit the location info to the phone network…not “back up” to the satellites as you seem to envision. So you need the phone part.
The satellites each emit a very accurate synchronized time signal. The GPS receivers receive the signal from several, and based on relative delay can determine your location. The satellites receive nothing from your GPS unit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS
Perhaps they need a feature that when set, if you stop for longer than 1 minute on your workout, it shreaks out **“Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” **very very loudly. It’d keep you moving.
Paul Smeulders
“Perhaps they need a feature that when set, if you stop for longer than 1 minute on your workout, it shreaks out “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” very very loudly. It’d keep you moving.”
Or how about something that just says “pick up the pace tadpole!” when you slow down beyond a certain point?!
I’d totally buy that!