Rientro Family Guide

Care with greater clarity.

Caring for someone whose routines, abilities, or sense of place are changing often means living with uncertainty.

Not knowing whether today feels ordinary.
Not knowing whether something has meaning.
Not knowing whether you should step in or give things time.

Rientro helps families carry less of that uncertainty. It learns what ordinary looks like for the person in your care, notices meaningful changes, and helps you decide when your attention may genuinely help.

This guide will help you:

• Understand how Rientro learns and responds
• Set up your system thoughtfully
• Know what to expect when something changes
• Respond clearly when immediate safety is at stake

Part 1 — Start Here

What is Rientro?

Rientro is a care intelligence system designed to help families notice meaningful changes in ordinary life and respond with greater clarity.

It is not only a map or a location tracker. It looks at movement, direction, time of day, familiar places, watch status, and health and safety signals. It holds those observations in context and gradually learns what is usual for the person in your care.

A change is not automatically an emergency. Rientro is designed to stay quiet when life is ordinary, and become more visible when several signals suggest that your attention may help.

The goal is not to watch every moment. It is to help preserve continuity while life changes.

What You Need

Apple Family

Android Family

Why cellular? A WiFi-only watch stops tracking when your loved one leaves home. A watch with its own cellular plan keeps tracking at the park, on the bus, or away from familiar places. This is a safety requirement, not a preference.

Try the Free Rescue Drill

Before committing to anything, you can experience a guided rescue drill at no cost.

The drill shows how Rientro moves from Safe through Monitor, Concern, Urgent, and Emergency as the situation changes. It is a way to become familiar with the system—not a prediction of what will happen to your family.

How to try it:

1. Download Rientro from the App Store or Google Play
2. Tap Continue as Guest — no email or password needed
3. Tap Start drill — the simulation begins immediately
4. Watch the system respond in real time: the level changes, the map updates, and at Emergency your phone sounds an alarm
5. Tap Mark as Safe to end the drill, then Stop drill when finished

Part 2 — Setup Guide

Setup takes about 10–15 minutes. Follow these steps in order.

Step 1: Create Your Account

1. Tap Create account in the app
2. Enter your email and choose a password
3. Check your email for a verification link and tap it
4. Sign in—you will see the main dashboard

Step 2: Add Your Loved One's Profile

Open the profile for your loved one and tap Edit.

Add what will be useful:

• Name and photo — helps family members and first responders identify them
• Date of birth and diagnosis, if you want that information available to the people helping
• Blood type, weight, and allergies
• Medications — what they take and when
• Memory anchors — places they may head toward, such as a childhood home, familiar café, or place of worship
• Hazard points — nearby dangers such as busy roads, bodies of water, or railway lines
• Sound sensitivity — if a loud alarm is more likely to add to their distress than to help, turn the siren off for them specifically; it then stays off even when you tap to sound it manually. This doesn't affect the two automatic cases (a fall or a dangerous heart rate)

You do not need to complete everything at once. Name, photo, and medical alerts are the most important starting points. Add or revise the rest as you learn what is useful.

Step 3: Set the Home Safe Zone

The home safe zone is a reference area around your home where your loved one is usually safe. It is not a permanent verdict about what is normal. Rientro uses it as one piece of context when understanding a change.

1. Tap Home base in the profile editor
2. Enter your home address or drop a pin on the map
3. Choose a radius: 50 meters for most homes, 100–200 meters for larger properties

Add your home WiFi name (recommended): In the same screen, enter the name of your home WiFi network. This gives the system an early departure signal—the moment the watch disconnects from your home WiFi, Rientro knows they may have left, even before GPS catches up. A 60-second grace period handles taking out the trash or checking the mailbox.

Step 4: Add Emergency Contacts

These are the people who will receive alerts if the situation becomes urgent.

1. Tap Emergency contacts
2. Add 2 to 5 people—a spouse, adult children, neighbors, or anyone who could help
3. Enter their phone numbers with country code (for example, +13305551234)

Step 5: Pair the Watch

1. Install Rientro on your loved one's watch from the watch's app store
2. The watch will display a 6-digit pairing code
3. Enter that code in the phone app when prompted
4. Grant all permissions—especially Always Allow for location and health data

Step 6: If You Care for More Than One Person

A subscription covers one person. If you are caring for two, each person needs their own subscription and watch—the system will not accept a second profile on a single subscription.

Once more than one profile is set up, the main screen shows a switcher. Tap any name to change who you are viewing, and the map and profile update together.

If you are managing several people—a couple or residents in a facility—write to support@rientro.care rather than buying subscriptions one at a time. There is a better arrangement for that, and we would rather set it up properly.

Part 3 — Daily Use

Most days, Rientro stays completely quiet.

That is exactly what should happen.

When life is ordinary, the system observes in the background. You will not hear from it unless something changes enough to warrant attention.

Your daily responsibilities are simple:

• Charge the watch every night — GPS tracking drains battery quickly
• Keep the watch on the wrist — the system is most useful when worn consistently

Using Stay Close When You're Out Together

When you take your loved one out — to a doctor's appointment, a store, a walk around the block — the home safe zone stays at home. Without context, the app might pay attention simply because you are away from home together.

Stay Close tells Rientro: "We're together right now — treat this spot as safe."

It does two things at once:

Stay-close alert. A quiet boundary forms around your loved one's position at the moment you tap it — about the width of a living room. If they move away while you are briefly distracted, your phone buzzes quickly. You do not have to watch them every second.

Pause home-distance alerts. Rientro stops treating distance from home as the important signal while you are together.

Real example: You bring your loved one to a hospital visit. In the waiting room, you step away for two minutes to speak with a nurse. Stay Close is on. If your loved one gets up and starts walking, you are alerted before they have gone more than a few steps.

How to use it: Tap Stay Close on the main screen. It turns green and shows Staying Close. Tap again when you are no longer together.

What Stay Close never turns off: Fall detection and heart rate monitoring stay active. A medical concern can still be flagged.

Part 4 — Understanding Alerts

Rientro uses five alert levels.

The levels describe how much attention may be useful. They are not judgments about the person, and they do not explain everything that happened. A change can resolve without becoming an incident.

Rientro does not react to location alone. It considers multiple signals together—movement, direction, time of day, familiar places, watch status, battery, and heart rate—to understand whether a change may matter.

The Five Levels

How the System Reads the Situation

The alert level is calculated from several signals working together:

• Time elapsed since leaving the safe zone
• Distance from home
• Walking speed and direction
• Time of day
• WiFi connection status
• Whether the watch is on the wrist
• Watch battery level
• Heart rate

A few behaviors worth knowing:

• Nighttime departures receive attention sooner. A 3 AM departure is treated as more urgent than a 2 PM departure because nighttime changes can carry more risk.
• Direction matters. If your loved one is 500 meters away but walking toward home, the system may ease off. Walking away can increase the level normally.
• Speed detection. Normal walking pace is expected. Vehicle-speed movement may indicate that they are in a car, so the system can increase urgency.
• Watch removal. If the watch is removed and stays off for 5 minutes, the alert rises to Monitor (Level 4).
• Low battery. Below 5%, the alert level is boosted by one to increase the chance that someone notices before the watch goes offline.

What Triggers Immediate Emergency

Three events jump straight to Level 1—Emergency—regardless of the current level:

• A fall — the watch detects a hard impact
• An abnormal heart rate — dangerously high or low
• 15 minutes outside the safe zone — the core safety rule

These are safety rules, not conclusions about what happened. Check the context and decide what help is appropriate.

A fall or an abnormal heart rate also sounds the watch's siren the moment it happens, without waiting on you — those are the two situations where your loved one may not be able to call out for help themselves. Reaching Emergency through distance and time alone does not sound it on its own. You decide, from the alert screen, whether a loud alarm will help someone find them faster or add to their distress.

Part 5 — During an Emergency

“They left the house and have not come back”

1. The watch disconnects from home WiFi. After 60 seconds, the system begins paying attention.
2. Level 5 → Monitor (4): They are outside the safe zone. You get a notification.
3. Monitor → Concern (3): They are getting farther away or moving away from home. The map shows a shaded area of where they could be.
4. Concern → Urgent (2): The change has continued. You receive an urgent alert. If you do not respond, texts go to your emergency contacts.
5. Urgent → Emergency (1): Every active contact receives a live tracking link. The siren does not sound on its own in a case like this — turn it on from the alert screen if you think it will help someone spot them, or leave it quiet. If you have not called emergency services, decide whether you should.

“They fell in the driveway”

1. The watch detects the impact
2. It goes to Emergency (Level 1)
3. Your phone sounds a loud alarm—even if it is on silent
4. Texts go to everyone on your emergency list
5. The watch plays an SOS siren automatically so anyone nearby can hear — a fall is one of the two situations where it always sounds without waiting for you

A fall with any sign of injury is a call to emergency services. Make that call first, then read the medical details from the app while you wait.

“They took off the watch”

1. The watch detects removal and sends you an immediate notification
2. If it stays off for 5 minutes, the alert rises to Monitor (Level 4)
3. The watch transmits its last known location, so you have a position even if they leave without it

“The watch lost signal”

1. You receive a message: “Signal lost. Last known location: [address]”
2. The watch keeps recording GPS data internally
3. When signal returns, the stored positions upload

The Live Alert Map

When an alert is active, the map helps you understand what is happening:

• Red dot — your loved one's current location, updated continuously
• Green circle — the home safe zone boundary, fixed in place
• Shaded rings (Monitor/Level 4 and above) — expanding rings around home showing statistically how far they could have gotten, based on time alone. At Concern (Level 3) and below, this sharpens into a shape calculated from real roads and sidewalks rather than a simple circle.
• Orange markers — hazard points you saved: roads, water, or railways
• Blue markers — memory anchors: places they are likely to head

The green circle and shaded rings are anchored to home and do not move. The red dot does. Right as an alert starts, they can sit close together or overlap — as your loved one moves, watch the red dot separate from the rest. If an orange hazard marker happens to be near their current position, it can briefly sit right on the red dot too; that is just two markers at the same spot, not a change in what either one means.

Part 6 — Understanding Patterns Over Time

These tools help you understand what has been happening without having to remember every detail yourself.

Alert History

A record of alerts, drills, and what followed.

Tap History on the main screen to see summary statistics—total events, average distance, highest alert level, and a trend indicator. Below that is a list of past events with date, time, highest level, distance, and how the situation ended.

Tap any event to see the full location trail and level changes.

Moments to Review

Rientro may hold a small number of moments from the last two weeks for you to look at when you are ready.

These are not demands for action. They are opportunities to tell Rientro what happened after things have settled:

• confirm that everything was fine
• explain what changed
• record what you did
• say that nothing needed to happen

Your response helps correct and improve what Rientro understands about this person and your care relationship. If there is nothing to review, that is good news.

Heatmap

The heatmap shows where alerts and movement changes have clustered. Larger circles mean more events; warmer colors mean higher severity.

Use it to notice recurring routes or places that may deserve a Memory Anchor or Hazard Point. It is a tool for understanding patterns, not a prediction of what will happen next.

Memory Anchors

Places your loved one is likely to head during a change in routine—a childhood home, former workplace, familiar place of worship, or favorite café. Saved anchors appear on the live map so family and responders know where to look first.

Hazard Points

Dangerous locations near the home—a busy intersection, body of water, or railway line. These appear on the live map to help guide search priorities.

Part 7 — Keeping Rientro Ready

Once set up, Rientro runs quietly. Like any safety system, it benefits from occasional attention:

Part 8 — Pricing

The app is free to download. The rescue drill is always free—no account required.

To activate real-time protection:

The plan includes:

• 24/7 GPS tracking on the watch
• All 5 alert levels with automatic escalation
• Text alerts to your emergency contacts
• Fall detection and watch siren
• Search area maps
• Unlimited drills

Part 9 — Common Questions

Can I use a WiFi-only watch?
No. A WiFi-only watch stops tracking when your loved one leaves home. The watch needs its own cellular plan.

Does this work at night?
Yes—and it responds sooner at night. The system knows that a nighttime change can carry more risk. A departure between 10 PM and 6 AM escalates nearly twice as fast as a daytime one.

Does the watch's siren go off automatically?
Only for a fall or an abnormal heart rate — the two moments your loved one may not be able to call out for help themselves. For everything else, including reaching Emergency through distance and time, sounding it is your decision, from the alert screen. If sound is especially hard on your loved one, you can turn the option off for them entirely in their profile; the two automatic cases still work either way.

What if an alert does not match what happened? Tell Rientro what happened when the alert ends. A false alarm, a real concern, and a situation that resolved quietly are all useful information. The system should remain open to correction.

Can multiple family members get alerts?
Yes. Add up to 5 emergency contacts. Everyone receives texts simultaneously—at Urgent (Level 2) if you do not respond, and immediately at Emergency (Level 1). You can also share an alert manually: press and hold Share an alert for 2 seconds, then tap Share live location to send a tracking link through any messaging app.

Can I monitor from another city?
Yes. The app works over the internet. You see the same map, alerts, and live location whether you are next door or on another continent.

My parent lives in a care facility—is this still useful? Absolutely. Set the safe zone to the facility's grounds. If your loved one exits the building or leaves the property, the system responds to the change in the same way.

If the facility uses Rientro's staff dashboard, they may give you a short care facility code. Enter it in the profile under Care facility code to connect your loved one's profile to their care team. This is optional and changes nothing about how the app works for you; it simply means staff can see the same alert at the same time.

What if they need a second safe zone?
The app supports multiple safe zones. Add a secondary location—a day care centre, a relative's house, or another familiar place—from the profile editor under Home base.

The drill says “DRILL.” Is that different from real alerts? Yes. Drill events are clearly labeled so you can distinguish practice from real alerts. The drill runs the complete simulation, including the alarm and alert screen, so you know what to expect.

Rientro is designed to help families carry less uncertainty without turning care into constant monitoring.

Preserving dignity, continuity, and ordinary life remains at the center of everything we build.

For help: support@rientro.care

Document Version: 7.1 | Last Updated: August 26, 2026