Tested on the magic carpet slope at North America's premier skimo racing venue of Berkshire East (but embargoed until Feb 1 as per the loaner terms), behold, the new Ortovox Diract!
https://beaconreviews.com/Specs_OrtovoxDiract.php
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Tested on the magic carpet slope at North America's premier skimo racing venue of Berkshire East (but embargoed until Feb 1 as per the loaner terms), behold, the new Ortovox Diract!
https://beaconreviews.com/Specs_OrtovoxDiract.php
The “Hey Siri, find my partner” generation will like it.
It's worked for AED's, seems like it's worth a try for the user that doesn't practice with their beacon.
Yeah honestly I think it's a great idea. Phenomenal.
I practice with my beacon regularly, but i'm not a patroller nor an avy professional. I would LOVE subtle voice prompts that made sure I was doing the right thing. I ain't above receiving direction, especially if it means digging my buddies out in time.
Curious to see how well this is implemented. Could be a serious improvement.
Finally an avy beacon with a rechargeable battery. Especially in light of the Shasta avalanche, I’ve never understood why more don’t do that. Li-ions don’t corrode, perform better at cold temperatures than alkaline, have way better capacity, and you can always make sure they’re topped up before a tour. Yes eventually the battery will die and need to be replaced, which may mean replacing the entire beacon. But at the power draw required from an avy beacon, it will be many years before that happens and by then there are probably other reasons to replace the beacon.
This blows my mind, not in a good way:
Quote:
In this informal test, but over several trials, the Barryvox S always locked onto a consistent signal at roughly twice the range of the Diract.
Currently happy with my 3+. Am intrigue with newer technology. Not harm having a better transceiver, but having half range of barryvox is not good,
I am not a fan of rechargeable batteries.Quote:
Finally an avy beacon with a rechargeable battery.
https://www.wildsnow.com/10527/skadi...n-transceiver/
Quote:
70 meters
Mammut claims that the Barryvox S has a search range of 70 meters in standard search mode and up to 100 meters in the professional setting “Search+” mode option.
Yeah, the range was ... adequate. I suppose.
Comprehensive range tests take me literally half a day, and I didn't have anywhere near that time to devote to this.
On the magic carpet slope, I was getting uncomfortably close to the buried targets before I had a consistent signal from the Diract. Although my buddy's T3 seemed to be faring about the same.
So I conducted a more formal range test in my backyard, but just the Barryvox S vs the Diract. I used a tape measure, but didn't record distances. Especially since the ratio was almost exactly 2x.
The S locked on at the perfect distance. A longer range really wouldn't help the search. Once again, the Diract just seemed too close for my preferences by the time I got a consistent signal.
Overall, I still think the Diract will be a great choice for many people. But if range is a high priority for you, look elsewhere ... with the caveat that such properties can sometimes be tweaked with firmware mods (and remember this had preproduction firmware).
More like divide by 2 for both of them.
Steve has a zillion different range test results here:
https://beaconreviews.com/ranges_receiving.php
... with the Pulse a pretty good proxy for the S.
None of them match up perfectly with my preferred tests, but looking at the differential between the T3 vs the S will give you a pretty good feel for the Diract.
Absolutely. But humans are human and being able to insert fresh batteries is a nice backup.
One more than one occasion my Garmin Edge 1000 has gone tits up in the middle of a bike ride, all I lost was the track of where I had been.
I agree that this is the one potential drawback that gave me pause over an internal rechargeable battery.
But given that each outing is a trivial % of the total battery life, I'm thinking that if anything people will keep topping it off long before they need to.
(And my understanding is that the potential "memory" problem from that is nowhere near as bad as it was with the earlier days of rechargeable batteries for consumer devices.)
My experience with rechargeable lithium-ion batteries is that they work great but in cold weather, they quickly lose charge whereas alkaline consistently lose charge over time. Across all my different cameras, camera lights, (also phones) they can stay at 90%+ for hours and then in <1hr quickly go from 75% to <20% to dead without me realizing it. The cold weather makes it significantly worse and I burn through batteries if they are not kept warm. It would need to be a significant amperage size battery for me to consider using it in the harsh conditions that beacons go through. At least you would always be (hopefully) fully charged at the beginning of the day, but requires a lot more checking than putting in fresh batteries a couple of times a season.
After going out yesterday and doing a couple different types of beacon drills with some friends who are newer backcountry users... the appeal of the Diract makes even more sense. The couple single burial practices we did on open flat slopes went fairly well, it was interesting to see which beacons were more user friendly for the noob users (my barrvox S was in the hands of the most inexperienced user, and she was the first to lock on and get close every time). For our last scenario we decided to do a multiple burial on a sparsely wooded ~20 degree slope. I've never been a "leader" in this type of scenario before, and even under no pressure with zero consequences trying to direct a group of inexperienced beacon users was extremely difficult. Having people yelling across a slope asking if it is the right time to begin probing or doing a microgrid was awful. For guides or people skiing with inexperienced partners I could see the appeal of the Diract instantly there. All you have to do is tell your clients to listen to their beacon. Obviously nothing beat practice for beginner users, but there are many scenarios I could see these being useful for.
Per Energizer/Duracell, their alkaline batteries do the same thing (and at slightly warmer temperatures than a lithium ion). The main difference is we don't tend to use alkaline batteries in anything as demanding as a cell phone, light, camera, etc. Neither battery likes when you pull a lot of power from them when cold, but while a cell phone will happily pull 10W+ (which is what causes it to go from the 75% to 20%) in a short burst when it needs to, an avy transceiver would never get close to that (typically ~0.02W in send mode). Have you ever tried running alkaline batteries in a headlamp in the winter? It can't stay at full brightness for very long.
As far as field replaceable batteries go, how many people do you think realistically carry extra batteries compared to a USB battery pack for charging a cell phone? I know personally I'd rather know it's always topped up than be able to quickly replace them if it tuns out they're low. Since I moved to headlamps with rechargeable batteries, I never leave for an adventure with anything less than 100% charge. It's just so easy to keep them topped up. There's no checking involved, when I get home from a trip everything gets plugged in. Camera, cell phone, headlamp, watch, and hopefully at some point avy transceiver.
Also regarding the Garmin Edge, I think that's mostly just the amount of engineering effort that went into it. I've had my Edge Explore freeze up on me plenty of times, but I've never had anything similar happen with the inReach Mini. No matter the conditions, that has never failed on me. Same company, but different levels of consequence from failure.
Of course, this is all just to say that there's nothing inherently wrong with lithium ion batteries. I'd obviously take a well-built alkaline battery powered device over a poorly built lithium ion device. But I'd prefer a well-built lithium ion device.
I carry spare batteries (AA and AAA) in case me or someone else needs them, pretty easy and light thing to throw in the repair kit.
Regarding rechargeable beacons, what about hut trips, winter camping, etc? It's one thing if you can't get your solar panel to charge your GoPro (and even headlamp to some extent) but a beacon is too critical to have to worry about. I could get behind something that was rechargeable with battery back-up (but why add the weight?), but a beacon is too critical to have to wait for a charge or not be able to charge in the field.
Would have to be really loooong hut trip for an initially fully charged Diract not to last the entire time.
And if the trip was that long, those little backup rechargers like this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005X1Y7I2/
... could do the trick if the sun wasn't strong enough.
I don't want to derail this thread any further, but if you're in a situation with an extended beacon search at the end of 7 day hut trip and you haven't been able to charge your beacon because it's storming, you may wish you could just throw some AAAs in there when your beacon dies.
I think that’s definitely the best option. Replaceable rechargeable batteries just in case. My light uses a 14500 battery, which is a standard lithium ion rechargeable battery that’s the same form factor as a AA. If you really need to you can just put a AA in instead, but with a reduced battery life.
Which is the other side of it, lithium ion batteries have far more capacity than alkaline. I don’t think Ortovox has said anything about the battery life of this beacon, but if it’s anything less than “the entire season” I would agree non-replaceable rechargeable batteries are worse than alkalines. But if it’s 300+ hours send like most other beacons on the market, and you also can just top it up before each trip, that’s a win for me. If it ends up being something like 30 hours of send, I’d definitely pass.
With the pre-requisite that the current standard of 300+ hours of send time is the minimum acceptable battery life, I think I’d rank my battery preference (in order) as:
- USB rechargeable, but also replaceable batteries
- USB rechargeable, not field replaceable
- non-USB rechargeable, but accepts rechargeable batteries like NiMH or 14500/18650
- alkaline only
To get slightly more on topic (I don’t know that this was really off-topic, seeing as this is the first modern beacon with an integrated rechargeable battery), the AED features also sound pretty useful. Reading that quote from the Uinta slide “my beacon, probe, and shovel were all in my backpack but I would of had no clue what to do first” it seems like a beacon that talks to you would be pretty helpful. But hopefully not lure people into thinking they don’t need avy training/practice because the beacon will just tell them what to do.
I agree that the battery discussion is totally on-topic. Really helpful too, really appreciate the feedback, thanks! All of this will be considered when Steve and I eventually write the full review once we have enough time with production units.
I'll admit that my first reaction to the integrated rechargeable battery was along the lines of Say What?!?
But thinking about it more, I'm starting to prefer it, especially given the trend of so many of my other electronics.
I also asked Ortovox at the on-line kick-off mtg for the testers how the battery life compares to the min requirement of 200 hours in transmit followed by one hour in search.
The answer was that the battery is optimized for cold temps and will vastly exceed the min requirement, although the latter was kind of a "don't quote me on that" thing (even though I just sort of did).
I’m a fan of (relatively) easy problem solving in the field, maybe a hangover from years of wildfire work. But it’ll be a while before I’m not skeptical about integrated batteries in beacons.
Insert some joke or wisecrack about old guys stuck in their ways.
Using a fixed battery lets them design around a known commodity and qualify their supplier(s). Lithium has been up in the real cold of space for a long time so it certainly can be done right.
@JonathanS: Verifying that they did this right (or not) may require some accelerated life testing. I'm guessing renting an environmental chamber for a while might be beyond what the ads will cover. Maybe get in touch with a university engineering program and see if someone needs a capstone project idea?
Seems pretty easy to leave it on for 200 hours in a freezer then try to search for an hour?
Another option is that an electrical engineering prof at the state research university here has previously borrowed avy beacons from me for some of his students' sr yr capstone project, so I might be able to interest him or his colleagues in something more rigorous.
I'm more thinking of the fact that the battery is a permanent part of the unit. There's a good chance that the number of thermal and charge cycles both play a role in how the battery performs over its life. Things physically grow and shrink in addition to the potential chemistry changes. Accelerated lifecycle testing is to torture it to simulate what it's going to act like after a couple seasons (or more). There are definitely ways to do that on the cheap, but it's different from checking the unit for 200 hours in the freezer to verify performance at a given point in its life (which I would probably do before and after).
I'd expect to find some degradation in battery life but hopefully it starts offering something like 400+4 rather than 200+1.
^ That’s what I was thinking. It’s one thing if your alky batteries fail in the field...
As long as your alkaline fails by dying, rather than corroding.
As far as battery testing, if you're willing to do a destructive test just opening it up and reading the specs off the battery itself is probably sufficient to see how it compares. Of course that may not work too well if Ortovox wants the beacon back at the end of the testing. I expect at some point it will show up on the FCC website for certification, which will have photos of the internals.
As far as degradation over time goes, I think it'll be hard to do much testing on that front short of looking up how the specific cells they used perform. Most consumer electronics have their batteries fail on account of charge cycles (~1000 is typically the limit of a lithium ion battery), but I don't see racking up many cycles on an avy beacon. Especially since charging from 95% to 100% only counts as 0.05 cycles as far as the battery is concerned. The next biggest factor is that lithium batteries don't like spending long periods of time sitting at 100%, which is what I think will kill these the fastest. If Ortovox cares about longevity, they'll need to overspec the battery and then say "100%" when it's really only at like 70%. That should be easy to do if they're not cost crunching. The typical 3xAAA setup is only 4500mWh of capacity, whereas a lithium ion battery of similar size should be on the order of 7500mWh. If they use this fact as a way to save size/weight/cost though, I think it's going to have a more limited lifespan.
Of course, that could all be meaningless, since the crystal oscillator tends to drift over time and is the reason most beacons end up out of spec within 5-10 years anyway. So really just making sure it works when cold is probably sufficient without worrying about whether the battery will still be good when it's time to replace for other reasons.
Another thing that could be useful to test is charging time. If it only takes a couple minutes to charge up a reasonable amount, that would be significantly better than having to leave it plugged in for hours.
This is actually why I suggested going right to an environmental chamber if some Uni program has one they can spare for a week or two. It's probably more of a service than a manufacturer deserves, but if they've done this stuff right they should have already done those kinds of tests. The published specs on a battery shouldn't be the only source of data if it's going into a safety critical application like this.
Any updates, Jonathan? Thinking about getting one of these as a loaner.
I’ve fondled one. The voice is a nice feature and isn’t obtrusive or distracting. Nice display, very intuitive, very nice, solid send-to-search flip-switch.
RE: Integrated batteries.
This isn't a new idea, my 2nd beacon was a Skadi circa 1986/87. The entire patrol was supplied with them with mixed results due to the earpiece cord being a bit fragile and the necessity of putting the beacon on charge EVERY NIGHT.
Our program was such that there were 2 sets of control teams, the Fucking As and the Killer Bs. We shared beacons and it was a constant PITA of having beacons die on route from lack of a charge. I am not a fan of integrated batteries.
Hopefully someone put new batteries in for a trip like this and even after seven days of sending there should be plenty of battery life for a search, I try to make sure other items like my headamp or camera have compatible batteries, but what I really want to know is can you change the voice on the Transceiver because a Samuel L Jackson mode would be awesome, "Fuckin' Muthafuka, Fine search MUTHERFUCKA! "
I've been intentionally holding off on any formal testing since I was hoping to combine that with formal testing of this beacon:
https://www.blackdiamondequipment.co...econ-lt-becon/
https://www.blackdiamondequipment.co...vy-safety-set/
... that I plan to purchase for myself once it's available directly from BD.
I am very confident thought that the production model will perform as anticipated from my first-look review of the preproduction sample.
And I think it would make an especially good choice as a loaner.
Hah, that would be great if you could change the voice not just among different languages but also among different voices and personality types within the same language!
(Fond memories of when my brother switched my Garmin car gps over to an upper-class English accent, with a rather disapproving reCALCulating whenever I made a wrong turn.)