Notification Troubleshooting

Missing notifications
Missing unnamed place
False notifications
Notifications delay

Missing notifications

Notifications are sent for named places only.

Please be sure to login to the AngelSense app
1. - When first getting started we send text notifications until the app is opened. Upon opening the app, your mobile (push) notifications begin being sent.
  - If you have not opened the app in some time, the mobile (push) notifications will stop or not send (iOS/Android policy). As a fallback, we will send text messages at this point, but we will require the user to open their app to continue receiving notifications eventually after one month, upon which time the text notifications will stop sending.
Please be sure to set up your notification preferences
- Arrival & Departure Notifications
Please be sure to allow mobile notifications to be sent to your phone.
- iPhone Notifications
- Android notifications
Departure notifications for named places may be missing in the following cases:
1. No cellular reception at the departed place. If the schedule shows “No Signal”, the system will be unable to identify the departure. To address this you could do two actions:
  1. Enlarge the place’s radius. This will associate the location updates outside the building with the departed place and departure notifications will be sent.
  2. Enable “Early Warning Mode” for that location. This helps address this issue but at the expense of occasional false alerts.
2. GPS reception loss. This is not typical for transits, but could happen in some cases, e.g. a backpack that is placed under a metal object, such as a bus seat.
  1. To get the current location of your child you could do the following:
    1. Enable Runner mode – This will update the app within a few seconds, regardless of the daily schedule.
    2. Check to see that the device is updating. See: Device Status Bar in App
      1. If the application does not update, use “Location by Text“.

If the GPS reception level is not poor, the location on the map best determines your child’s current location. Device status

If GPS is poor, check for the location of the cellular tower the device is communicating with, indicated by the following icon. In urban areas this gives another rough indication for the location of the device. If the antenna is close to the location, it is likely that your child is indoors at that location with no GPS reception. If the antenna is far, it may indicate your child has left, but GPS has not locked yet.

Missing unnamed place

The system requires a few minutes of GPS updates in the same area in order to create a location in the schedule. In the event of the device being in an unnamed location, the device must be in the location for at least 5 minutes for it to create a location in the schedule.

In some places, cellular coverage drops quickly. For example, in schools that block cellular reception. In this case, the system will not have sufficient data to create an entry.

In order to avoid false exits, the system will not automatically name a location if there is another nearby named location or if the GPS updates are showing to possibly be false.

Please contact AngelSense customer care at support@angelsense.com and let us know the time your child reached that place and the address and we will create a place for you.

False notifications

Here is a video to help explain false alerts and how AngelSense overcomes GPS limitations.

The two main ways to reduce false alerts are:

Enlarging the place boundaries.
Disabling Early Warning Mode (disabled by default).

If GPS reception is poor but AngelSense analytics suspects a potential exit, an alert is still being sent, to be on the safe side. In such cases, additional information is provided to help determine if the alert is false or not. The following indicates the alert is likely false:

Poor GPS reception in the status bar
A question mark at the end of the notification, e.g. “Joseph left School at 16:32 (?)”
The departure transit entry in the schedule is grayed out, e.g.:
A random route, not characteristic of walking or driving, e.g. the route on the right below:

Official U.S. government information about the Global Positioning System (GPS) and related topics

Notifications delay

Departure notifications are delayed by a few minutes to minimize false alerts. You can reduce the delay by activating Early Warning Mode.
In case of very long delays it is likely due to poor cellular coverage. AngelSense supports T-Mobile & AT&T and we are happy to replace your device with one that better suits your area.

Here’s additional information explaining how AngelSense overcomes GPS limitations – GPS requires line of sight to satellites and has significant errors indoors, near high buildings, and under some conditions in vehicles. Typical GPS devices suffer from several false alerts a day. AngelSense patent-pending analytics filter out most of these GPS errors successfully! To minimize false alerts the analytics require a few minutes of GPS location updates resulting in a short delay.

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