Cameras watch.
Coop Watch listens.

It doesn't have to — they're better together. Coop Watch wakes you up in seconds; the camera tells you what you're walking out to. But if you only have one, the wake-up matters more than the footage.

Detection is gated to nighttime hours, when the flock should be roosting and quiet, and keyed to distress-level sound rather than ordinary clucking. In field use, quiet nights don't page you.

Three things: an old Android phone (no SIM card or plan — the junk-drawer one is perfect), a charger, and a steady Wi-Fi signal where the phone sits. Continuous Wi-Fi is required for 24/7 monitoring — if the connection drops, alerts can't reach you during that gap. Prefer set-and-forget? A dedicated weather-sheltered hardware node is coming soon.

Test it first: stand where the phone will sit and stream a video for a minute — if it plays without stalling, you're fine. If not, an inexpensive Wi-Fi extender or outdoor access point usually solves it, and we're happy to suggest one for your layout before you subscribe.

Alerts pause until you pick a plan — we don't charge you automatically because we never took a card. Your event history from the trial is kept, so nothing is lost when you subscribe.

It was built in one. Nodes are mounted sheltered from direct precipitation, and the electronics are rated well beyond the temperatures a coop sees.

Yes — and the easy way is free and appless. Add your Coop Watch dashboard to your iPhone's Home Screen and tap Enable alerts, and the coop buzzes your iPhone directly with the event and its audio clip. Want an alarm that's loud even on silent? Add the Pushover app for that. Only the coop's listening node has to be an old Android — the phone that gets the alerts can be any iPhone or Android you already carry.

No App Store needed. Open your dashboard in Safari, tap the Share icon, then Add to Home Screen. Open Coop Watch from that new home-screen icon and tap Enable alerts — that's it, the coop can now notify your iPhone directly, free. One catch worth knowing: it has to be added to the Home Screen. A plain Safari tab can't receive alerts; only the installed icon can.

That's how iPhones treat every notification — they stay quiet on silent, and no app can make a web notification louder than your ringer. To get an alarm that cuts through silent mode and repeats until you acknowledge it, add the Pushover app, switch on its Critical Alerts, and connect it under Alert delivery. Coop Watch then sends both — a quiet everyday buzz, plus, when it matters, a loud one Pushover can push past silent mode.

Yes — but only one of them is anything you'd ever buy. The coop phone is any old Android from the junk drawer, no SIM or plan, and it just listens. The alert phone is the one already in your pocket. They play opposite roles: one listens at the coop, the other gets woken up wherever you are.

Almost always it's the phone putting the app to sleep to save battery. In Android settings, open Coop Watch, set battery use to Unrestricted, and turn off battery optimization for it. Keep it on its charger and on strong Wi-Fi, and it stays listening around the clock — if the connection drops, alerts can't reach you during that gap, so a solid signal matters.

Coop Watch is built by BrambleRidge Home Design Group in Seguin, Ontario — a residential design practice with a long-running side of field electronics, developed and tested on our own property against the local raccoon population.