RCare Mobile Battery Life

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ABSTRACT:
As we’ve made continuing improvements to RCare Mobile, the processing power required has increased.  We have identified a major source of battery consumption because of how RCare Mobile notifies differently from typical notification methods.  These issues can all be resolved by using the Rcare mobile application as it was designed.
TECH SUPPORT SUMMARY:
Facts:
1. Vibration alerts cause major battery consumption and there are several ways to use RCare Mobile to limit these types of alerts.
2. Versions 2.32 and later now only have a vibrating alert every 3rd alert instead of every single reminder like the audio alerts, which use the battery power far less.  (EX:  Active Incident Reminder = 10 seconds, you will receive an audio alert every 10 seconds, but a vibrating alert only every 30).
3. RCare Mobile notification timing is set in the application admin settings.  By default it is set to every 10 seconds.  For every 10 seconds you increase this setting, it will reduce battery consumption in half. (See RCM Manual available on distributors webpage for how to access RCM admin settings).
Reasons there are too many activation
1. Users simply don’t respond to alerts.  We can’t do anything about multiple calls that remain active for more than an hour, other than show you they aren’t being answered.  If the facility is too busy to answer the calls or simply do not answer them, the batteries are going to die very quickly regardless of how we configure RCare Mobile or what phones are being used.
2. They aren’t using the “I Got it Feature”.  By enabling this and using it, other users will not continue to get the audio or vibrating alerts for those incidents.  Only the individual caregiver who pressed “I Got It” will.  This feature allows for better response time accountability as well.
3. Active Incident Reminder timing has never been changed from default, or is still otherwise too low for the facility’s average response time.  If 20 minute incidents are common place, then having it set to alerts every 10 seconds is a very bad idea (see images below).

4. Remember, it vibrates every 3rd reminder.  So, if the active incident reminder is 10 second, the phone will vibrate every 30 seconds.  If it’s every 120 seconds (2 minutes) it will only vibrate every 6 minutes.  Below is a graph that shows how this can escalate.

5. The image below shows the same phone, both with constant notifications.  The first graph shows with a 10 second active incident reminder that also has the vibration timer still set to 10 seconds.  The second graph shows the active incident reminder set to 10 seconds, but with the Software upgrade to only activate every 3rd alert (30 secs.)
 
CONCLUSION:
If they don’t answer calls, battery life will always be short.  Using the I Got it feature and setting an Active Incident reminder interval that is appropriate for the facility’s call volume/response times will alleviate most battery issues.  You may also go into the Android settings to turn down the brightness and setting Location services to Off to save on battery life.