What is a Safe Zone?
A Safe Zone is any area where your dog spends time and is safe- they can roam in this space and you do not need to get notifications when they move within this space. You will receive notifications if your pup wanders outside of a Safe Zone with out an owner, as long as Escape alerts are toggled on, see: Alert Settings & Notifications.
You can set up unlimited safe zones, some common examples include:
- Your home
- Second home
- Friend's home
- Family member's home
- Pet Sitter's / Boarding Day Care
- Office
- Favorite Dog Park
- Travel Destinations
Adding Safe Zones
- Open the Fi app
- Tap your pup's profile on the bottom right-hand corner
- Tap the three stacked lines on the top right
- Tap 'Safe Zones'
- Tap the '+' button in the upper right corner
- In "Location Name" pick a unique name that describes the location such as:
- Home (if your pup visits multiple homes, you'll want to be more descriptive here to avoid confusion as your dog goes from home to home)
- Vacation Home
- Beach Home
- Office
- Tom's Place
- You may see an address auto populate in the search bar, which is the approximate location you are at when creating the safe zone. The address is only to help you find the location you want to create your safe zone in. This address will have no impact on your safe zone notifications, instead you want to ensure the safe zone shape is correctly covering the area in the map, even if this updates the address to appear incorrect. You can create another safe zone if you need to for another area you are often in. You do this by entering an address in the search bar to navigate to a location other than the one you are in at the moment.
- When creating your Safe Zone shape, by default you'll have a circle, but you can select a polygon by tapping the "yellow square outline" on the bottom right of the map view. Safe Zones have a minimum radius/area. They must have the minimum to account for GPS accuracy margin of error.
- Circle Safe Zones have a minimum radius of 60 feet
- Polygon Safe Zones have a minimum area of 11,309 square feet and can be customized to fit your exact area.
- Circle Safe Zones have a minimum radius of 60 feet
- To alter the size of the safe zone, pinch two fingers too zoom in or out on the map, or pull and drag the different points in the polygon safe zone to create a unique shape.
- Complex property? You can layer several shapes to create exactly what you need.
- Tap 'Save' when you're all set!
- In "Location Name" pick a unique name that describes the location such as:
Adjusting Safe Zone Size
It is important that you setup your Safe Zone to cover more space around the area designated as “safe”. This will help to avoid unnecessary notifications when your dog is near the edges of the Safe Zone.
Safe Zones have a minimum radius/area they must be to account for GPS accuracy margin of error.
- Circle Safe Zones have a minimum radius of 60 feet
- Polygon Safe Zones have a minimum area of 11,309 square feet
To adjust the size of your Safe Zone:
- Open the Fi app
- Tap your pup's profile on the bottom right-hand corner
- Tap the three stacked lines on the top right
- Tap 'Safe Zones'
- Tap the Safe Zone you wish to edit
- Here, you can edit the name of the Safe Zone
- To alter the size of the safe zone, pinch two fingers to zoom in or out on the map, or pull and drag the different points in the polygon safe zone to create a unique shape
- Tap 'Save' when you're all set
Safe Zone's for Complex Property Layouts
You can make multiple safe zones and stack the safe zone shapes to create a shape that is more accurate to your specific area.
Please note, safe zones can overlap along edges and touch, but if the new safe zone overlaps with the center of an already existing zone, it will be considered a duplicate and will not be created.
Removing Safe Zones
- Open the Fi app
- Tap your pup's profile on the bottom right-hand corner
- Tap the three stacked lines on the top right
- Tap 'Safe Zones'
- iOS: Identify the safe zone you want to remove, and swipe left, a "delete" button will appear
- Tap Delete
- Tap Delete to verify
- Android: Tap Remove on the top right
- This will reveal a red button ⛔ next to all Safe Zones
- Tap the red button ⛔ next to the Safe Zone you want to delete
- Tap YES to verify
Escape Alerts and Notifications from Safe Zone
In an ideal world, we would like to know the second our best friend is out of a Safe Zone - and we do our best to achieve just that. But we also try to balance a few things:
-
We want to be smart about powering the GPS chip in your dog’s collar -- it costs a lot of battery and if your dog actually escapes, we want it to have as much battery as possible so you have time to find them
-
We want to avoid notifying you wrongfully -- it will often happen that a dog will play ball right next to a Safe Zone, or just lays down in the grass a few feet away. It also simply happens that the GPS signal will give us a location with a 30-50ft radius accuracy (this is driven by sky conditions, coverage in your area, buildings in your environment and other factors) -- for all these cases we are trying to be conservative so we don’t send you 10 notifications a day. There is nothing worse than a system that is over-sensitive and that you can’t trust the day something actually happens.
Notifications for escape alerts are sent after two confirmed GPS reports outside of a Safe Zone. The fastest alert possible is 2 minutes, but it may take 2-5 minutes to get an alert depending on the GPS/LTE coverage in your area. Testing GPS + LTE & Lost Dog Mode provides steps to test this feature.