How to use the FireShield app

The home screen opens on your property. At the top, every device on that property is listed with a colored dot and a word. Green and READY means the system is armed and waiting. If you own more than one property, tap the address at the very top to switch between them.

• READY — armed, nothing running.
• The colored dot repeats the same information at a glance, for when you are reading the screen in a hurry.
• Tap the address at the top to move between properties.

The device tab shows one controller at a time, named — Main House, Guest House, and so on. The gear on the left opens that device's automatic activation settings. The grid icon on the right lists every device on the property if you have more than one.

Everything you can press on this screen is either beside the device name or along the bottom. The two at the top change how the device is set up; the five at the bottom start something.

• Test Run is a short test — it runs through your zones three times, then stops on its own.
• START runs water only. START with FOAM adds Class A foam.
• Schedule and Set zones decide when the next run happens and which zones it uses.
• More than one controller on the property? Swipe the device row left or right to move between them.

The tiles on the left and right of the status panel show the condition of your system. Green means installed and working. Gray means not installed or not available right now — a property without a pool shows a gray pool tile, and that is normal rather than a fault. Above them, the status panel gives you the state, the zone running now, the time left on the run, and how far away the nearest active wildfire is.

• Left: connectivity, water pressure in psi, flow in gallons per minute, and power source.
• Right: number of zones, foam, pool, and generator.
• Gray is not an error. It means the option is not installed on your system.

With automatic activation armed, the controller watches the distance between your property and the nearest active fire. When a fire comes closer than your activation distance, the system starts on its own. Your technician sets the distance for your terrain at installation: a shorter distance on a flat suburban street, a longer one on a ridge or canyon lot, where fire can move uphill toward you much faster than across flat ground.

When a fire comes within your activation distance, the system does not start spraying right away. It goes to PENDING and shows a countdown of your delay. Until the countdown reaches zero, no water runs, and you can either start the system now or stop it.

No app or signal needed. Two buttons and a switch cover a test run, a full activation, and a way to stop everything. Zones and schedules stay in the app.

• A single press on either button only wakes the screen. It can never start the system.
• The two buttons start test runs; the switch starts a real activation.
• Hold both buttons together for three seconds and everything stops, whatever it was doing.

Your system waters every zone by default, one after another, because no household water supply can feed a whole property at once. When the danger is on one side — a neighbor’s house on fire, or wind blowing embers over one fence — you can send all the water to that side instead.

• Only the next start: the selection is used once, then reverts to your default.
• Make it the default: every future start, manual and automatic, uses the new selection.
• Fewer zones means more pressure and a longer soak on the zones you chose.

Tap Schedule and set days, hours and minutes. The system will start on its own when that countdown runs out, with or without foam, using whichever zones you have selected. This is what you use when you are evacuating tonight and want the property wet before the fire is expected to arrive.

• The app confirms in plain words — "Starts in 2 hours" — so a mis-set number is obvious.
• Choose foam at the same time as the schedule.
• A schedule can be canceled from the same screen at any point before it runs.

The map tab shows active fires as flame markers, wind as directional streaks across the terrain, and your property as the FireShield badge. Zoom in and your activation distance appears as a dashed ring around the house — if a fire comes inside this ring, the system starts on its own.

• The layers button, top right, switches the base map and what is drawn over it.
• Pinch to zoom. The fire markers grow as you zoom in.
• This is the same fire data the automatic decision is made from. Nothing is hidden.

Tap the menu button — the three lines at the top right of the home screen — to open Settings. There are nine options, grouped under three headings: Account, FireShield Controller, and Community Safety. They are numbered below in the order the app lists them, and each one has its own section on this page.

Your name and the mobile number the system calls and texts. This is the number a fire alert goes to, so check it once a year — if your number changes and you do not update it here, you will miss warnings. Change what you need and tap Save Changes; Cancel leaves everything as it was.

Type your current password once and the new one twice. The eye icon at the end of each field shows what you have typed, which is the fastest way to find a typo. Nothing changes until you tap Update.

First decide whether you are adding a new property or another controller at a property you already have. Add Property takes the address, a nickname you will recognize in the app, then the controller details. Add Controller to Existing Property skips straight to the controller: pick the property from the list, name the controller, and enter the Device ID from your installer. Both forms end with the automatic activation settings.

• The Device ID comes from whoever installed the system. It is printed on the controller paperwork, not on the app.
• Give each controller a simple nickname — Main House, Guest House, Barn.

Choose the property, then the controller, and the Edit and Delete buttons become available. Edit opens everything the app knows about that controller — address, nickname, Device ID, and the automatic activation distance and delay — and nothing is saved until you tap Update. Delete removes the controller from your account.

• Both buttons stay grayed out until you pick a property and a device. This is on purpose.
• This is where you change your automatic activation distance and delay after installation.

A scenario is a named set of zones to water instead of all of them — the east side, the roof line, whatever fits your property. Tap New scenario, give it a name, then pick a zone and tap Add for each one you want; the zones you have chosen are listed underneath. Saved scenarios can be edited with the pencil or deleted with the trash can, and removing one never changes anything on the controller itself.

• A scenario is a shortcut, not a restriction. You can still pick different zones for a single start from the device screen.
• Name them by area, not by zone number: “Roof and east side” is clearer than “Zones 2 and 3”.

Under Community Safety. It opens a message on your phone with the invitation already written, so you only pick who it goes to. Wildfire threatens a whole neighborhood, not just one house — a protected home between two unprotected ones is at greater risk.