r/FiDogCollar

Has anyone used Fi tracker data to submit for the AKC FITB title?

If so, how did you do it?

So I make a lot of stuff for my own dogs but I’m not a seller. I bought Fi 3+ for both my dogs and wanted to make them new collars for the Fi but as I have been searching it seems like without buying them whole new collars from Fi to take the hardware from there is no other way for me to get the attachment points?

I’m only looking for 2 pairs of 3/4” hardware. I would resort to taking it from the collars they came with, but they have the 1” attachment points as that’s the collar size that fit them, but I want to make them something narrower.

Any ideas welcome! I’m in the UK so also don’t easily have the option of buying from an approved maker until there is a similar program for businesses over here

I am just posting this because I couldn’t find anything on the actual Lifespan of the Units to see if mine was malfunctioning or just dying a normal battery death. When looking could only find how long the charged battery life lasts per charge for a healthy battery.

Been a FI customer since 2019.

Series 1 battery lasted 2 1/2-ish years

Series 2 - lasted 3 months. Then, the next unit 2 months. Then they came out with the series 3 and we tossed the series 2. Never buy a series 2. They almost lost our business over it. It was worse than the series 1 in every way.

Series 3- very happy with it. It is almost dead at 3 ish years. Just bought a 3+ and got it today.

The way it dies. About 6 months before it dies, you notice it “charges to 100%” and then reads 80ish% 24-48 hours later when it used to take weeks to get that low. Then it holds that charge and decreases normally. The death of the battery will be sudden after that.

After 6ish months of the above, your collar will read any percentile but still well above 50% and suddenly “go offline” and not reconnect on its own. You’ll put it on the charging base and it will do the green light as if it is resetting itself. It will then hold a charge for 3-5 days for the next week or two. Each time going offline while reading a charge percentage above 50% in the app. Manual factory resetting will not help. It makes it go green again while on the charger, but the problem persists.

Eventually it will go offline every day after less than 24 hours and only reconnect once on the charging base.

I recommend ordering your new Fi unit when it hits the 3-5 days mark. Earlier if you regularly use it to find an escaped dog. We kept ours this long because pup is 9 and we primarily use the FI app to make sure he is getting enough exercise.

Have the Fi mini on both of my Huskies and I consider it to be standard equipment for a dog like a Husky that is always thinking about considering escaping. When we go on walks and bike runs though the tracking is basically useless; I have to use a separate app AllTrails to more accurately track our distance. The technical problem of tracking yourself with your cell phone was solved years ago. One would think that if the app can tell that you and your dog are together within Bluetooth range traveling that it would switch to the phone GPS to keep track of where you were going, but no. Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me this is not a highly complex technical problem. I don't understand why they can't figure it out. Because of this issue, I don't really trust any of the data on the app and I just consider it of value to track an escaped dog and all the other stuff is just useless fluff.

EDIT: I will add that I have used it to track an escaped dog and for that purpose it was invaluable; I never would have found the dog otherwise. I was able to track her and then eventually she stopped and I rolled up on her and opened the car door with her favorite chew bone and I guess she decided she had had enough and she jumped into the car.

I’m not really sure where else to post this that might get dev attention, but the new update that added some trending community posts to the live tab is causing my app to massively lag (iPhone 14). Plea for devs to take community posts back out of the live tab and keep them in the community tab for those of us who either don’t use community features or like to only see clean statistics about our own pet on the live tab.

I googled it, searched amazon and checked Reddit and came up surprisingly empty handed.
I’m fostering a dog and he came with a Fi Mini on his collar. Within hours of playing with my dog, the silicone holder ripped. Luckily I found the mini itself, but I’m looking for better options for attaching a mini to a collar.

Im shocked you can’t buy these from Fi directly. This seems like the kinda product Amazon would be flooded with but there isn’t much. Any recommendations?

Edit: See updates in thread - Fi pushed an update that appears to fix the issue with the delayed loading of data and responsiveness. To save you digging, force stop the Fi app in Settings, then relaunch and it should behave normally in dark mode now!

Since the update that enabled dark mode on android, we have had very very poor performance on our phones. Everything in the app is very sluggish, but changing to display different data causes long loading circles, or empty data fields for extended times. IE: Switching between my 3 dogs, pulling up activity data, opening rankings - it all takes about 2 minutes to load now, where a week ago it was virtually instantaneous. I've had a few times where the updates are very, very long - where the phone puts the screen to sleep before it updates the data as well.

Is anyone else experiencing the same? I've closed and restarted the app, as well as restarted the phone several times, and the poor performance remains since the last update.

Myself and my 2 sons all have samsung devices, 2 S25 Ultras, and 1 S26 Ultra.

I'm a new Fi collar user for my rescue pup. It seems fairly nice so far. The only thing is when installing new apps on my phone I typically do not allow them to have constant access to my location.

I don't see the reason why they need my location all the time. I app seemed to work normally for the first week without me needing to give it location data when the app was closed, but now the app is forcing me to enable it. They say they will not "use" the data but, that doesnt mean they won't sell it or arent keeping it stored somewhere. Plus tech companies have proven themselves pretty untrustworthy recently.

I'm wondering if theres something I'm missing? Why do they need the data? If its just because I feel like i might want to return it and seek a less intrusive device.

Appreciate any insight from yall!