Alerts, counts and ignores¶
A log entry, an alert and a meal are different events. Turning off a category's alerts retains sightings; turning off its detector stops new detections. See the settings comparison.
Recent signals¶
The home Strong / Likely totals count distinct identities (a supported Samsung broadcast ID, otherwise radio/address/type) seen within the last 90 seconds, using the highest current confidence when several categories match one identity. Repeated updates refresh that identity instead of adding another count. The totals reuse the 128-entry detection cache, refresh every two seconds, and expire while sniffing is stopped. They are recent signals, not a verified inventory of physical tags: a broadcast-ID change or an unsupported address rotation can temporarily add an identity, and Apple Find My clues also occur on compatible products other than AirTags. Disabled detector categories are excluded. Sound mute, snooze and per-device Ignore silence alerts but do not hide observed signals; Scent Book and logs continue counting emitted observations. Demo samples never add to the real totals.
Home alerts always use a small card beside the dog in landscape or below it in portrait, including repeats that earn no meal. The dog animation, Snooze / Ignore and Start / Stop sniffing remain accessible. Eating starts only when a detection earns a meal; ordinary repeat tags have a 30-minute feeding cooldown, conservatively restored after reboot. Repeat alerts can therefore appear without another eating animation. For an immediate animation check, enable Settings → Data → Demo mode with sniffing running; synthetic Flipper/Pineapple meals occur every eight seconds without changing saved progress. Full evidence stays in the Log.
Diagnostics reports byte-addressable internal heap, its boot minimum and the largest allocatable block (page 3). The 80,000-byte warning tracks current free space, clears when it recovers, and no longer overwrites other notices. The USB serial console prints aggregate memory, stack, radio/drop, save-error and watch-progress statistics every 30 seconds; it does not print discovered identifiers or payloads. See hardware measurements for the short run and remaining acceptance limits.
Snooze, Ignore and tag identities¶
Snooze uses powered-on time, expires automatically, and resets on reboot. Stop/Start does not cancel snooze; Settings offers early resume. Ignore persists a keyed digest for the selected device and category, never a raw address. A changed identity can alert again; unrelated devices in that category remain eligible. Supported Samsung tags use their broadcast identifier, which can survive a MAC-address change. The 64-entry list never silently evicts an entry when full. Ignoring also clears any pending alert for that identity, including a repeat received while the Quiet Alerts or Tag Watch review screen is open; an unrelated eligible alert remains visible.
Home's Snooze / Ignore targets the last displayed alert, even if another radio event arrives before the tap is processed. The alert and its action menu show the same short, board-local ID; the menu says ALREADY IGNORED for a saved identity. Log → AirTag sighting → More shows the current ID and Ignore status. The AirTag category is a Find My protocol clue and can include other devices. Ignored sightings still contribute to the recent-signal count and logs, so ignoring a signal does not reduce the Likely total. The displayed eight-digit code is a comparison aid, not a permanent physical-device identifier; full keyed identities still control matching.
For Samsung tags, supported FD5A advertisements expose an eight-byte broadcast ID and a reported connection state. Hound uses that ID for Ignore, recent counts, feeding cooldowns, Follow Scent and Travel Watch, so a MAC-address change alone does not create a new identity. Owner-connected reports are quiet for ordinary alerts, sounds and Travel Watch; sightings remain counted and logged. Offline, unknown and unsupported formats retain normal alert eligibility. Log → Samsung sighting → More shows the reported state, identity basis and Ignore status.
Settings → Ignored scents shows used/free capacity and pages only occupied entries. Existing 16-slot saves migrate automatically, preserving every entry, Scent Book and outfit. Ignores stay in internal storage and work without an SD card. With a writable card, Hound automatically keeps two authenticated backup generations under /SURVSNIFF/IGNORES/; SD backup shows status and lets you retry. Startup shows SD CHECK with checked-record/file progress while validating history. Internal saves and safe eject remain responsive; the newest ignore list is backed up when the check finishes. A busy backup request retries automatically, and repeated taps do not add more requests. Backups contain keyed identities, never raw addresses or the identity key. They do not expand the 64-entry live limit or automatically restore over internal saves. Recovery currently requires a development utility using the original board key; an on-device restore control is not implemented. See Ignore storage and SD backups.
Ignore has no time-based expiry, but the broadcast ID itself can rotate. Hound cannot reliably join different IDs using RSSI, timing or the number of nearby tags. Existing address-based ignores are retained; they cannot automatically cover an unknown broadcast ID on a new MAC. If an old entry no longer matches, use Ignore on the current sighting to save its broadcast ID. UUID-only/unsupported advertisements fall back to the radio address. See Samsung identity and state handling for supported formats, evidence and field checks.
For category-wide quiet, use Settings → Display page → Alert Types → page 2 → SAMSUNG_TAG: OFF. Leave its detector enabled to retain counts and logs. This setting suppresses all Samsung-category pop-ups/sounds and also excludes Samsung tags from Travel Watch, including unfamiliar tags; re-enable it when those warnings are wanted. It is not an ownership allowlist, and Hound does not switch it off automatically when a device is ignored.
All emulator-inspired ideas, selected work and future acceptance criteria are recorded in the roadmap. The research handoff for detection items 1–8 records primary sources, candidate matchers, confidence limits, implementation dependencies and required tests; these planned additions are not enabled detections.