Losing mobile signal doesn't have to mean losing alerts. If your phone is close enough to your pet, it can pick alerts up from the collar directly over Bluetooth. Here's how that works and where the limits are.
Bluetooth takes over
When the collar can't reach the mobile network but your phone is in Bluetooth range, your phone receives the alert from the collar and shows it to you locally — with exactly the same wording you'd normally get. At the same time, we pass the alert on to your family members so nobody is left out, and we skip sending a duplicate to the phone that already showed it.
Alerts keep working in the background
Alerts keep being processed while the app is in the background, so you don't have to leave Ask A Vet open on screen to receive them.
Please note: Only alerts work this way. Other kinds of tracker work — health figures, vitals, device details, time sync and settings sync — only happen while the app is open.
On Android, when the app is in the background and the collar has no mobile connection, the app runs a quiet background service on a channel named Collar background listening so Bluetooth alerts keep arriving. You may see it in your notification shade; that's expected.
Your thresholds live on the collar too
Your temperature thresholds are sent to the collar itself, so — as the app puts it — "it can flag the condition even without cellular signal." The same is true of your bark alarm settings. That means the collar can still spot a problem while offline; it just needs a route to tell you about it.
Settings you change while it's offline
If you change bark or temperature settings while the collar is out of reach, the app doesn't complain. We keep the change and automatically retry sending it to the collar once an hour until it confirms.
The limits
Important: If the collar has no mobile signal and your phone is out of Bluetooth range at the moment something happens, that alert is lost — the collar doesn't replay it when the connection comes back.
Please note: On iPhone, force-quitting the app stops it waking in the background for Bluetooth alerts. Leave it running in the background instead of swiping it away.
What to do about it
- Keep your phone's Bluetooth on when you're near your pet.
- If a tracker keeps losing signal in one particular spot, check the tracker status sheet — Weak network signal and Can't reach the network tell you it's coverage rather than a fault.
Related articles - Understanding your tracker status: Working normally, Connected via Bluetooth, Tracker off - How tracker notifications work