Description of Alerts

The eShepherd web app will display a number of different alerts in the Animals menu to highlight certain conditions.

If you hover your mouse pointer over the alert icon, you will be shown a pop up box with a description of the alert.

Battery Alerts

Battery alerts can be seen on both the Animals menu or the Unfitted Neckbands menu.

Depending on your view settings (Table, Card or Card - Detail) the alerts will appear in different areas. For the Table view, you may need to enable the Battery column.

There are 3 different battery alerts that can be displayed depending on the state of charge of the battery.

Low Battery

The low battery alert is the yellow battery icon, and indicates that there is less than 30% charge remaining in the battery

Flat Battery

The flat battery alert is the red battery icon, and indicates that there is less than 13% charge remaining. At this point, the neckband will stop all virtual fencing functions (so no audio or pulse stimulus will be given to an animal crossing the virtual fence boundary). The Neckband will resume normal operation once the battery has (re)charged above 13% again.

Critically Low Battery

The critically low battery alert is the red battery icon with a diagonal line through the battery and indicates that there is less than 8% of battery charge remaining. The Neckband is now running in its lowest power mode in an attempt to recover battery charge, and this may take several days of good sunlight. Note that in winter the solar irradiance (the strength or power of of sunlight) is significantly reduced and this means solar charging can take longer. Again, in this state, the Neckband will not perform any virtual fencing functions.

No Battery Alert

When there is no battery alert displayed, then the battery charge level is above 30% and a dashed line, '-', will be displayed.

Battery alerts are determined by the neckband over a 24-hour period and can therefore take quite some time to change. For example, if you do have some Low Battery alerts, and your neckbands have been exposed to good sunlight for a day, the low battery alert may persist for some time longer until a new determination has been made by the neckband.

Tip: If you are in a rush to get an updated state of charge from a particular neckband then you could try the following:

• expose one of the solar panels to direct sunlight
• place the neckband back into hibernation using the magnet key (turn it off)
• wait approximately 1 minute
• then un-hibernate / wake the neckband again, making sure that you have direct sunlight on the solar panel

This will force the neckband to make a new estimation of battery charge and may clear or update the previous battery alert.

General notes about battery charge

The battery used in the eShepherd Neckband is a particular lithium chemistry that is both very safe and has a long-life expectancy (of around 8 yrs). This lithium chemistry is not prone to "thermal runaway" that has resulted in battery fires for other types of batteries.

Another characteristic of lithium batteries is that they have a very stable output voltage over much of their capacity, meaning that the voltage remains the same when it is fully charged right down to when the battery is nearly empty. This makes it more difficult to estimate the actual state of charge of the battery and hence, only approximate indications are provided via the above battery alerts.

Solar Panel Alerts

Along with battery alerts, you may also find a solar panel alert. These solar panel alerts are displayed if the neckband has not registered a low solar input power from any one of the solar panels for more than 24 hours.

The most common scenario is that a neckband may be lying on the ground and one of the solar panels is in darkness. This will trigger the solar panel alert. Also, it you have hung your neckbands on a fence with one solar panel facing the sun, then again, this will trigger the alert.

If the neckband is on an animal, and a solar panel alert is raised, then this may be an indication that the solar panel has been damaged. It could also mean that the solar panel is covered in mud or muck and is no longer contributing to charging the battery. In this case, it is advisable to check this neckband and cleaning of the solar panels may be required the next time animals are brought to the yards / corrals.

Animal Alerts

There are a number of animal alerts that be displayed in the Animal menu

Animal Down (Ad)

The Animal Down Alert (Ad) is displayed if the Neckband has not detected any motion for more than 1 hour. This motion detection is quite sensitive, and the Ad Alert will not be triggered if the animal is simply resting.

The most common condition that triggers this alert is when the neckband has either fallen off the animal, or if it has been deliberately removed from the animal.

It will also be triggered if the animal has died, and the neckband is completely still.

Animal Escaped (Ae)

The Animal Escaped (Ae) alert will be displayed if the animal has pushed through the virtual fence boundary.

For the standard containment function (where return-to-paddock is disabled), this means that the animal has received 3 audio-pulse pairs in an attempt to contain the animal, but it has remained outside of the virtual fence boundary (the exclusion zone). In this state, the animal will receive no further stimulus until it has returned inside the virtual paddock (into the inclusion zone) on its own accord. The neckband will then reset and start enforcing the virtual fence boundary again.

Note that it is always ok for an animal to come back into a virtual fence boundary without receiving any audio tone or pulse stimulus.

Animal being Returned (Ro)

The Ro alert is displayed only when the return-to-paddock feature is enabled, and the animal has broken through the virtual fence boundary. In this condition, the neckband will now only apply further stimulus if the animal attempts to walk further from the inclusion zone, and thereby the animal is returned to the paddock.

Search terms: Battery level. Battery Charge. Battery state of charge. Battery indicator. Battery voltage.

Updated on: 19/11/2025