Innotek Smart Dog Fence SD-2100

Innotek, a child company of Radio Fence which also makes the gear for Invisible Fence and PetSafe, has the SD-2100 as it’s middle offering. We used this system for our own customers until the Innotek IUC-5100 and IUC-4100 became available. It is reliable, value for money and rechargeable.

The SD-2100 is the cheapest dog fence system available with a rechargeable battery. We think this is really a must have feature since it is much more economical, convenient and environmentally friendly than disposable batteries. The battery on this unit is an older NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride), that takes about eight hours to recharge and requires charging about once a month. The collar is recharged by resting it on a cradle located on top of the receiver unit. We like that there is no separate recharger that can get lost. One annoyance is that during recharging the receiver makes a quiet humming noise like a florescent light with defective ballast. This should not be too big a deal if your receiver sits in your garage but could be annoying if located in a living area.

The collar band is decent. It is made of blue cloth. The band has a reflective strip for night time visibility, surprisingly useful if you have a dark dog or play outside at night.

The collar beeps softly when the dog nears the boundary zone. The manufacturer tells us that the beep is high pitched so that it is easier for the dog to hear, what we know is that it is definitely hard for us humans. The beep is audible to the dog, but can be hard for an owner to hear, especially when it is windy. A louder beep would helpful for owners during the training period.

Also feature on our wishlist but not present in the Innotek SD-2100 is compatibility with the Innotek wireless indoor pods. To get compatibility with the indoor pods, you need to trade up to the Innotek IUC-4100.

Innotek offers a lifetime warranty on all it’s products, but that is a little misleading. This really means that they will replace the unit for free in the first year and offer you a discounted repair in subsequent years. We have installed many of these systems and find them to be highly reliable.

Overall, the SD-2100 is a solid system representing great value for money.  Rechargeable and reliable, it has nearly everything you want.  The only things holding back the SD-2100 are the collar and the incompatibility with the indoor and outdoor pods.

If you find this site useful, please consider purchasing your system from our online store.  You can shop confidently knowing that Dog Fence DIY offers the lowest prices authorized from the manufacturer.  In addition, you receive free shipping and a copy of the Dog Fence Experts Guide to Installation and Training.

Collar

The collar on the SD-2100 is where the unit starts to show it’s age. The collar box is a clunky box style and is suitable for dogs over 15 pounds. The collar is rechargeable, but uses the older Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery. The charge lasts about a month between recharges and needs to recharge overnight. The instructions say to let it charge for 14 hours, our experience has been closer to eight hours.
To recharge the collar, you sit it in a cradle on top of the base station, there is no dedicated charger. This means you never lose the recharger and it is nice not having to have one extra wizzle-wazzle to keep track of in your house. But, you can only recharge one collar at a time. And the collar makes an annoying hum when recharging.

Long/Short/ Prongs The collar prongs screw onto the main unit holding the collar band in place. The system comes with both short prongs for the folliclly challenged and long length prongs for our more hirsute friends.

Collar Band The collar band is cloth and has a reflective stripe for night time visibility. The band closes with a snap type buckle that is easy to connect and disconnect.

Base Station

The base station on the SD-2100 is the same unit used on the newer top of the line Innotek Ultrasmart IUC-4100 and the IUC-5100. It is a great reliable unit, and it is for good reason that Innotek carried this base station over to their new units.

1. Correction Level – this switch allows you to select between the three correction levels. In addition the correction is progressive so it increases in strength the nearer the dog gets to the boundary line. Like all the Innotek systems, the correction level will be the same for all collars on the system. So this is not a good choice where you have dogs that have very different correction needs.
2. Field Size – this switch adjusts the signal strength for large and small yards. Where you are using less that 1,000 feet of boundary wire you will adjust it to small (SM), for more than 1,000 feet adjust it to large (LG). The system can do up 25 acres (5,000 feet of boundary wire).
3. Field Width – this dial lets you adjust the distance how wide you boundary is going to be. Using the dial, you can make the boundary start anywhere from a couple of inches from the boundary wire up to over 10 feet. Most people are going to set the field width between three and five feet to give you a boundary wide enough to avoid the dogs running through, but without taking away too much of your yard.
4. Collar Recharge Reminder – the base station reminds you to recharge the system once a month. Once you get the recharge reminder, you can place the collar in the recharge cradle in order to reset the reminder. We would suggest you switch the feature off to avoid getting the reminder beeping in the middle of the night. The collar has a much more accurate reminder light right on it.
5. Alarm Volume – this dial adjusts the loudness of the alarm that sounds when you get a wire break volume. You will want to set this as the maximum, it is not that loud anyway.
6. Power – do you really want our help here?
7. Battery Backup – this switch enables and disables the battery backup. Using eight AA batteries (not included) that go in the rear of the control box, the base station can keep running when you have a power failure. You get a little over two days of battery life, so if you get a power outage longer than a day, you are going to want to switch out the batteries for a fresh set.
8. Power Adapter Plug – this is where you hook up the included AC adaptor. The other end of the adaptor goes into a wall socket.
9. Boundary Wire Terminal – the two boundary wires hooks up into this terminal block. The wire should form a loop starting and ending at the base station. Latches on the terminal block secure the wire in place.
10. Status Light – green tells you that everything is working, flashing red tells you that there is a break in the boundary wire.
    On top of the base station is a cradle (11), where you sit the collar to let it recharge. The collar will only recharge when there is a complete boundary loop in place, so the first time you use the collar, you should put in a dummy loop to let the collar charge while you are installing the real boundary wire loop.

The base station can be wall mounted, by bolting the removable back panel into the wall. The rest of the unit then just slides over the panel to be held in place. The base station should be kept sheltered and preferably above freezing for best results.

Boundary Wire, Flags and Splices

The Innotek SD-2100 comes bundled with:

• 500 feet of 20 gauge boundary wire
• 50 boundary flags
• 2 waterproof splice (for joining pieces of wire)

Extra boundary wire, flags and splices are available for yards that are larger. Each extra boundary kit (including 500 feet of wire, 2 splices, and 50 flags) costs $29.95. You can also upgrade the wire ot 18 gauge, although we are not convinced that this is very useful for most installations.

Training DVD and Instruction Manual

Innotek includes a decent training DVD and a skimpy instruction manual with the system.

Indoor and Outdoor Zones

Unlike the IUC-4100 and IUC-5100, the SD-2100 cannot be used with the indoor and outdoor zone pods.

Warranty

Innotek’s standard limited lifetime warranty comes with the system. This is a one year full warranty, then a fixed charge repair in subsequent years.

For the Innotek SD 2100 Manual click here. (PDF)