Two physical laws shape how trackers behave, and understanding them makes "why isn't this working like I expected" answerable without a support ticket.
Battery vs. Cadence
The trade-off is direct: more frequent reports mean shorter battery life.
If you configure an asset tag for real-time updates, you're trading years of battery for a live dot. That's rarely worth it, the valuable signal for a portable toilet is events, not motion.
The Motion Wake
Battery tags typically ship with motion-triggered wake: they stay silent until an accelerometer detects movement, then transmit a fresh position and go back to sleep. This is why an unmoved unit "silent" for 20 hours is completely normal.
Cadence Settings
Registered devices have an expected interval value that PortaPro uses to compute health. If you know your device actually reports every 5 minutes, set it accordingly, otherwise the health calculator treats a normally-silent tag as suspiciously silent.
Sample Health Thresholds by Cadence
Cellular Dead Zones
Cellular trackers buffer positions offline and burst-upload when they get signal again. PortaPro accepts late deliveries silently into history, a 6-hour-late alert would train you to ignore the alert channel. Events only fire inside a 30-minute freshness window.