13 Jul Determining Battery Health

To determine battery health for tags programmed in Tag Agent, you must look deeper than the tag voltage. This only shows you tag voltage when there is no stress on the battery.

The voltage you want to check is when the tag is transmitting as this has the most significant effect on the tag’s battery voltage. To do this, click “Advanced” on the top toolbar, and select “Send Test Transmission.” This provides the battery voltage when the battery is under stress. It is critical that you do this before deploying your tag to assess the tag’s battery.

It isn’t enough to simply connect to your tag a few times a year, you need to send test transmissions to exercise the battery.

PS – never disconnect your tag while it is in Auto-start mode either. Your battery does not like that. Put your tags in “Stop” or “Shutdown” mode and store them in a cool, dry place.

You can read more about this in our past article: https://wildlifecomputers.com/blog/tips-from-the-experts-tag-storage/