Extend The Battery Charge On Your Pet’s Tracking Tag

Great Tip!Did you know that using the Monitor mode on the Marco Polo handheld locator can make the battery charge on your pet’s collar tag last up to 3 times longer? Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Well that’s an “under the hood” design feature of the Marco Polo system done by our really clever engineers. It’s a pretty handy feature, but unfortunately most customers don’t even know about. We’re thinking once you’ve learned about it and how it can make your Marco Polo experience even better, you will want to use it.

Longer lasting battery charges on the pet’s tracking collar might be a great reason for keeping your Marco Polo System in Monitor mode, but it’s not the only one. Whenever your system is in Monitor mode:

  1. The locator will warn you if the battery is low on any pet tracking tag. Remember, Marco Polo can continuously monitor up to 3 pets. So a low battery on any one will alert you to the need to recharge the tag.
  2. In addition to checking the battery status, the system is continually checking for any faults in the locator and each tag, so you can have confidence that everything is working correctly and is ready to immediately track your pet when you need it most.
  3. You will receive an alarm if any monitored pet wanders outside the “safe zone” you have selected for them.
  4. And as mentioned in the lead-in to this article, the battery charge on the pet tracking tags will last up to 3x longer. Again, this seems counterintuitive, right? How can the system be doing more, yet using less of the tag’s battery power? Well we said it was clever – trust us, it is clever and it does reduce the tag’s battery use.

Those are some very compelling reasons to program your Marco Polo Locator for your pet’s “safe zone” and keep the system in Monitor Mode when not tracking a wayward pet.

So how to take full advantage of all the benefits of this feature? Here’s a few simple steps to take:

  1. Turn the handheld Locator on and program the Marco Polo Locator’s “safe zone” feature for each pet tag (or keep the default setting of Medium to start with). For more detailed information and setup instructions, refer to the user manual, pages 16-20. If you have misplaced the user manual, you can go here to download another copy.
  2. Charge the pet’s tag, and when fully charged put it on your pet.
  3. Put it in Monitor Mode. Unless you need to track a wayward pet, leave the Locator in Monitor Mode at all times.
  4. Keep the Locator plugged into the charger. Don’t worry, keeping the Locator turned on and plugged into the charger will not harm the battery. That’s another “under the hood” design the clever engineers at Marco Polo figured out.

That’s all there is to it! If the Locator never gives you an alert (i.e. not “beeping”) everything is fine. No alert means that the entire system is working, the batteries are adequately charged in the Locator AND your pets tags and all your monitored pets are inside their programmed “safe zone”. If you do hear an alert, it is time to check for low battery indications on the pet’s tags, or to see if your pet has wandered outside the “safe zone”.

With Marco Polo on the job, you’ll never need to do a head count of your pets when you come home, and you’ll never again  take a nap with one eye open just to make certain your pets are OK.

Marco Polo and monitor mode – you can relax and have peace of mind knowing that Marco Polo is on the job.

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2 thoughts on “Extend The Battery Charge On Your Pet’s Tracking Tag”

  1. Michael Wells

    A Marco Polo Pet System user with 3 cats recently asked: Can you clarify the “Monitor Mode” settings and whether the boundary setting would affect the battery charge life?”

    Here’s what our engineers had to say: “keep the locator plugged into its charger and set to “Monitor Mode” for each of the 3 cats. If you get false alarms then you can increase the boundary setting for any or all of the cats until you don’t get false alarms any longer. The boundary setting does not affect the battery charge life of the tags on the cats. Monitor mode will just tell you when the cats have wandered too far or need to have their batteries charged. To track a cat, you must switch that cat’s tag to Track Mode on the handheld locator.”

    And of course this would apply to any use of the tracking tags in Monitor Mode, whether the tags are used on cats, dogs, calves (yes we have livestock users!) or your favorite tortoise (we have at least one of those users too!).

  2. Michael Wells

    Van Cat Meow – travelling cat says: “Okay, I’ve read the article twice and it’s still not clear. Exactly how does monitor mode use less power than if the tag was just ‘idle’?”

    Marco Polo says: In “idle” mode, which is the mode the Marco Polo Tracking Tag automatically enters whenever it is not communicating with a hand held locator, the tag wakes up once every 10 seconds and has to scan all 50 frequencies the locator might be transmitting on at that moment. In “monitor mode” the tag and locator make time and frequency appointments to communicate once every 40 seconds. So in monitor mode the tag is only waking once every 40 seconds instead of once every 10 seconds. And since it already knows what frequency the locator will be transmitting on (remember, the tag and locator made a previous “appointment” to do so), the tag wakes up, communicates very quickly and goes back to sleep until the next appointment. Pretty clever, huh?

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