Track-iT Tags & Batteries

The Follow-Me Track-iT Tags are small, lightweight (18g) & unobtrusive to wear on a performer. Here is some general info on the Tags and their battery use.

Daily Tag use

An active Tag typically lasts 6-8 hours on a full charge. The USB-C allows a full recharge in around 2 hours. That USB-C also would allow charging via a power bank whilst active to provide live tracking for longer periods or in more unusual conditions, such as on a vehicle. The standard Follow-Me Track-iT charger allows 10 Tags to be charged at a time.

A Tag is always active (even when on charge) unless you put it to sleep or it’s battery has reached 0%. You can re-activate a ‘sleeping’ Tag by putting it on the charger. You can ‘ID’ a tag from within the Follow-Me interface, this causes the LED to blink bright white for 30 seconds.

Also within the interface you can change the state of the Tag LED (Off, Dim or Bright), and you and reset the Tag (Soft or Hard reset).

Refresh rate

By default the Tags have a refresh rate of 40Hz. Any amount of Tags (or even Anchors) can be added to the system without affecting or compromising that rate – meaning the system works great with fast moving performers & rapid changing of direction – such as aerialists or ice skaters. However you can also set the refresh rate to 20Hz or 10Hz. If tracking in an immersive audio world, they don’t need a very high refresh rate, so setting the audio Tags to 10Hz would be a good idea.

Tag LED states

The Tag LED colour can tell us various information about its state and any errors or issues it may be having. If communicating to our support team about a battery issue, including a video of its LED state/colour can be useful. Below table provides information on the different state colours a tag could display.

Tag status	Colour
Tag heartbeat with battery >20%	Green blinking
Tag heartbeat with battery <20%	Red blinking
Charging from 0 to 90%	Orange
Charging >90%	Green
Identification through FM3D	White blinking
Power on / reset	Blue

Error codes start with red. Below table provides information on error code patterns a tag could blink:

Tag colour code	Description
Red – White – White – White	Communication error
Red – Yellow – White – White	Battery over discharge
Red – Yellow – White – Yellow	Over temperature
Red – Yellow – White – Blue	Under temperature
Red – White – White – Yellow	Too hot while charging
Red – White – White – Blue	Too cold while charging
Red – Green – White – Yellow	Too hot to charge
Red – Green – White – Blue	Too cold to charge
Red – White – White – Green	Charging with reduced current due to being under/over temperature
Red – Yellow – Yellow – Yellow	Hardware fault
Red – Yellow – Blue – Blue	Input overvoltage

Battery lifetime

As you can see with your Smartphone, every battery degrades over time with increasing power cycles. You can expect to have 80% of the original active hours after approximately 300-400 cycles. After some years, if you believe your Tags have significantly degraded in terms of the active hours, you could look into battery replacement. But this is only a procedure that can be provided by the Follow-Me hardware team & is not a user-serviceable process. Reach out to our support mail if need more information. Considering downtime, shipping time/costs & repair time, it could be that obtaining new Tags may be a better solution.

Battery safety

The Tag contains a 140mA-h Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery (like the one in your Smartphone). 

Lithium-Ion batteries contain a lot of energy in a small enclosure – Whilst this is perfectly safe in normal circumstances. Any very extreme mis-use of the battery could in theory potentially lead to dangerous battery conditions – This is however an extremely unlikely event.

Please note the following that applies to any Lithium-Ion battery (including the one in your smartphone) – 

• Do not place the battery near fire, heaters, other high temperature locations, or apply heat to the device.
• Do not pierce the battery with any sharp objects, strike with heavy objects, or damage the casing.
• Do not expose the battery to water or any other type of liquid, or allow the device to get wet.
• Never short-circuit, damage, or heat the battery to approximately 60°C (140°F).
• If the lithium-ion battery catches fire, it may burn even more violently if it comes into contact with water or moisture in the air.
• Do not throw water on a burning Lithium-Ion battery! A fire extinguisher must be used.

Tag operating temperature

Operational temperatures would be 0°C to 40°C, under non condensing conditions.

Note that charging should happen at room temperature, otherwise the tags might be too cold or too hot to charge correctly.