Nightwatch Smart Halter

[starsandsun]

So I did a thing, and purchased the Nightwatch Smart Halter for a 6 month period ($79 per month).

Things I like:
*easy to read screen
*tracking heart rate, respiration and activity level very straightforward
*you can set your own alert levels (for example, heart rate over 50)
*customer service is actually fantastic

Things I don’t like:
*took me the better part of a day to get it to sync with my barn wifi
*an LTE or 4G plan isn’t available yet, which means you have to have your horse within a wifi signal area
*battery lasts about 8 hours, which means it doesn’t work all day, and it won’t work all night - ETA … battery supposed to last 12 hours and may have been draining faster because of challenge in connecting to WIFI - will revisit this
*takes a few hours to recharge

Is anyone having a better time making it useful to them? FWIW I do have a farm camera system, but it would be great to be alerted when I need to look.

[NaturallyHappy]

I don’t have one, but based upon the things you don’t like, I would be very unhappy w it. Good luck!

[starsandsun]

I updated my post with a few new observations … it may work better within reason than what I have been experiencing.

[LilDunFilly]

Barn I worked at had them for some of the broodmares. We had to switch them out ever 10-12 hours; each mare had two so one was charging while the other was on.

@starsandsun

Is anyone having a better time making it useful to them? FWIW I do have a farm camera system, but it would be great to be alerted when I need to look.

I’m unsure of how to make them “more useful” without knowing why you’re using them. To monitor a specific issue? Monitoring mares ready to foal? Only at shows? Outside of things like that, where the halter only needs to be used for a finite amount of time, I don’t think the Nightwatch is particularly useful for day-to-day monitoring (or night-to-night). All it can really do is alert you to X problem (if you’ve set it to send an alert).

[Zu_Zu]

Honestly, the halter with limited battery charge sounds dysfunctional for my barn.

Glad to be aware -

[starsandsun]

Colic risk. Two really bad colics for no particular reason in the past 4 weeks.