Sentry Mode — Let Your Phone Watch the Rod

Let your phone watch the rod.

Point it at a rod tip or a float and it watches. Clip it into the rod holder and it feels. Either way, when something pulls, it taps you — and it keeps the moment so you can see for yourself what happened.

Sentry Mode is live in the FishRadar app today, on the App Store and Google Play. Watching one rod, the alarm, and the saved clip are free for everyone.

The bite you miss is the one you weren't looking at

Bank anglers, carp fishers, surfcasters and ice fishers all solve the same problem the same way: rig the rod, prop it up, and then try to keep watching it. Bite alarms exist because that is genuinely hard — and a good one costs as much as a rod.

You are already carrying a device with a camera, an accelerometer and a speaker. Sentry Mode uses them. It cannot replace a mechanical bite alarm in every situation, but it costs nothing to try, and it does something no alarm on the market does: it keeps the video of the moment it went off.

Two ways to stand guard

Both modes run the same detector underneath. Sentry spends the first few seconds of every session learning what 'still' looks like for your setup, then reacts to sharp changes from that baseline — not to a fixed threshold that would be wrong for your rod, your ground and your weather.

Watch it

Prop the phone up facing your rods and drag a box over each rod tip or float. Sentry watches only inside those boxes, so people walking past and branches at the edge of the frame do not set it off.

Feel it

Clip the phone into a rod holder and it detects the strike through the rod itself. No camera needed, so it works in the dark and costs almost nothing in battery.

Wind check

Before you arm it, leave the rod alone for eight seconds and Sentry tells you what it is up against. If rhythmic movement dominates, it says so rather than letting you find out through a night of false alarms.

The moment, saved

When it fires, it keeps the seconds around the alarm — video in camera mode, the motion trace in rod-holder mode. You judge whether it was a fish, and you have something to show either way.

Movement is movement

Sentry cannot tell a fish from a gust of wind. Nothing that watches a rod tip can. Wind moves rods, waves move boats, and a bird landing on your quiver tip looks a lot like a bite. That is exactly why every alarm saves the clip: the phone reports what moved, and you decide what it was. It also runs only while the app is open and the screen is on — there is no background mode, and we will not pretend otherwise.

The clip is free, on purpose

Free — one rod, in either mode, with the full alarm and the saved clip of your latest strike. Sharing that clip is free too: it is the best argument for the app we have, and putting it behind a paywall would be charging you for our own advertising.

Pro — watch up to three rods at once, keep every strike of the session in the evidence locker, and tune sensitivity for wind or heavy gear.

Common questions

Does it actually detect fish?

No. It detects movement — sharp movement that stands out from the baseline it measured at the start of your session. A fish causes that kind of movement, and so does a gust of wind. Sentry saves the clip precisely so you can tell the difference yourself.

Will it keep watching when my screen is off?

No. The watch runs only while the Sentry screen is open, so the app keeps the screen awake while it is armed. Leaving the app ends the session and tells you it did. iPhones do not allow an app to use the camera in the background, so any app promising an overnight camera watch is not doing what it says.

How much battery does it use?

Rod-holder mode is cheap — it reads the motion sensor and nothing else. Camera mode is much heavier because the screen and camera both stay on, so plug in for a long session.

Does it work in the dark?

Rod-holder mode does, since it never uses the camera. Camera mode needs to be able to see the rod tip; a headtorch or a bank light pointed at the tip is usually enough.

What about wind and waves?

Steady rhythmic movement — wind rocking a rod, swell rocking a boat — is recognised as rhythm and pauses detection instead of firing, and the screen tells you that is why it is paused. Run the eight-second wind check before you arm it to see what your swim is like.

Is my location or video uploaded anywhere?

No. Clips stay on your phone, and a shared link carries only how long you were on watch, how many movements were caught, and which mode you used. No coordinates, no names, no video ever reaches our servers.