Alerts & notifications
What DockNeighbor watches for, where alerts show up, and how they reach you on each plan.
DockNeighbor’s job is to tell you the moment something on your boat needs attention — a leak sensor tripping, a battery bank sagging, shore power dropping out. This page covers where those alerts live in the app and which delivery channels each plan unlocks.
Where alerts show up in the app
The Alerts destination in the app is the home for everything that has happened on a boat:
- Per-device event timeline — a chronological feed of events for each device: flood alarms, threshold crossings, valve activity, and status changes.
- Current-issues banner — anything that needs attention right now is surfaced at the top, so an active problem is never buried under old events.
Alongside that, every boat keeps an event log. See History & data for what is kept and for how long.
How alerts reach you
| Channel | When it works | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Alerts in the app | While the app is open, wherever you are | Any plan, including Free |
| Push notifications | Even with the app closed | Any plan, including Free |
| To the destinations you set | Dockside and up | |
| SMS and WhatsApp | Text messages for the events you choose | Weekender and Voyager |
| Voice call | A phone call for the events that must never be missed | Voyager |
An alarm reaches you first. The station carries every event to the cloud, and the cloud pushes it to your phone or desktop even when the app isn’t running — on every plan, including Free; background delivery is not something the plans gate. What the plans change is where else an alert can go: Free is push only, while paid plans add email and extra destinations (1 on Dockside, 2 on Weekender, 3 on Voyager); Weekender and Voyager add SMS and WhatsApp, and Voyager can place a voice call.
If the alarm is still live five minutes later and you haven’t acknowledged it, it reaches the friends you marked — one on Free and Dockside, up to five on Weekender and Voyager. A dragging anchor skips the wait. See Sharing & roles.
SMS (Weekender and Voyager) is set up under Settings › Notifications in the app, where each destination subscribes to the alert categories you choose — so you can reserve texts for the serious stuff, say flood alarms, while everything else stays a quiet push notification. Your mobile number itself lives in Settings › Account, and enrolling is described in the Terms § 6.
What can trigger an alert
Flood alarms
Flood alarms are the fastest events in the system. A leak or float sensor sleeps between reports; the instant it senses water it wakes and reports to the station, and the station carries the alarm to the cloud within seconds. The push reaches you with the app closed, on every plan including Free. There is no polling interval to wait out.
Threshold alerts: battery voltage and shore power
The battery voltage sensor and the shore-power sensors raise alerts when readings cross thresholds you control:
- Battery — a threshold you set, or a fast drop, before the bank that runs your bilge pump gives out.
- Shore power — losing AC at the pedestal raises an alert, so a tripped breaker at the marina doesn’t become a dead battery bank days later.