22nd October 2026By Neil Skoglund
LDS03A Use Case
A gate left open is one of the most common, and most avoidable, headaches on a farm or yard. A walker forgets to shut it behind them, a contractor leaves it open between loads, or a member of staff means to come back and close it. By the time anyone notices, stock has wandered into the wrong field, or the yard has sat unsecured all night.
This guide is for livestock farmers, estates, equestrian yards, depots and secure yards. It shows how a Dragino LDS03A on the gatepost, reporting into Trackpac, tells you when a gate has been left open - not just opened for a moment - alerts you to yard gates opening out of hours, and builds a history of when each gate is used.
The LDS03A is an outdoor LoRaWAN open/close sensor. A weatherproof enclosure holds the battery, radio and antenna, and an armoured, steel-sheathed cable runs to a heavy-duty magnetic contact. A separate magnet goes on the moving part - here, the gate. It sends a message the moment the gate opens and again when it closes, plus a status check every 2 hours, so you hear about a gate within seconds rather than at the next scheduled report. For the wider picture of open/close monitoring, see our overview of door and window monitoring; this guide focuses on gates.
Magnetic contact
Heavy-duty contact on an armoured cable. Works across a 10-30mm gap on wooden doors and 30-45mm on steel.
Reports every opening
Sends each open and close as it happens, plus a status check every 2 hours.
Open-too-long alarm
Raises an alarm if a door stays open past a time you set.
Counts & durations
Keeps a running total of openings and how long the last one lasted.
Built for outdoors
Weatherproof enclosure, rated from -40 to +85°C.
Up to 10-year battery
8500mAh battery. Life depends on how often the door is used.
Specifications from Dragino's LDS03A documentation.
A field gate opens many times a day for perfectly good reasons: a tractor going through, stock being moved, a vet or feed delivery arriving. An alert for every one of those would be noise, and you would soon stop reading them. What matters is the gate that stays open.
That's what the LDS03A's open-too-long alarm is for. You set a time on the device - say ten or fifteen minutes, long enough for a vehicle to pass and the gate to be shut behind it - and if the gate is still open after that, the sensor raises an alarm. Trackpac turns it into an email, SMS or push notification, so you can get someone to the gate before stock finds the gap. When the gate is finally shut, a "resolved" message confirms it.
The same sensor does slightly different jobs depending on the gate. Choose the alert rules to suit each one.
Gates between fields, especially where a footpath crosses the land. Know when one has been left open before cattle or sheep mix with another group or get into a crop or a field being rested.
Gates spread across a large area, used by tenants, contractors and the public. Tag them by farm or beat so each keeper or manager gets alerts for their own gates only.
Paddock and yard gates used by several owners and helpers through the day. An open-too-long alert catches the one left unlatched after evening turnout.
Compound gates protecting machinery, materials and fuel. Get an alert within seconds if the gate opens out of hours, and a record of every time it was used.
For a farmyard, machinery yard or depot, the question is different: is anyone coming in when they shouldn't be? Machinery, tools and fuel are often kept in yards that are empty overnight and at weekends. Because the LDS03A reports each opening as it happens, a Trackpac rule limited to out-of-hours times can alert you within seconds of the gate opening at night, while daytime traffic stays quiet.
It's also a simple check at the end of the day. If the last person out forgot to close the compound gate, an open-too-long alarm in the evening tells you before the yard sits open all night. Trackpac doesn't lock the gate or call anyone out - it tells you, quickly, so you can decide what to do. If you use a security or monitoring system, webhooks can forward the events to it.
Every report includes the open or closed status, a running total of openings and how long the last opening lasted. Over weeks, the Trackpac history shows when each gate is busiest, when contractors or deliveries actually came and went, and how long a gate stood open on a given day. It records when, not who - but lining up the times with your own records is often enough to see where a habit of leaving gates open comes from. Reports and exports give you the figures for your own spreadsheets, and you can share a read-only dashboard link with staff or a yard manager so they can check gates without changing any settings.
On a very busy gate where you only want usage figures, the LDS03A can be switched to count-only mode: it stops sending a message for every opening and reports the running total periodically instead, which saves battery. You lose real-time open and close alerts in that mode, so most field and yard gates are better left on the default.
No mains power or wiring is needed, and one sensor monitors one gate. The main thing to get right is the position of the magnet.
Order "Trackpac Ready", scan and name it
Buy the LDS03A from Hexaspot with the Trackpac Ready option, scan its QR code in the Trackpac app and give it a clear name like "Top meadow - road gate". Tag it by farm, field or yard so alert rules and dashboards can be grouped.
Contact on the post, magnet on the closing edge
Mount the enclosure and contact on the gatepost the gate closes against, and fix the magnet to the gate's closing edge so the two line up when the gate is shut. On a metal gate the contact works across a gap of about 30-45mm; on a wooden gate, about 10-30mm. Route the armoured cable along the post, out of the way of hinges, latches and passing vehicles.
Allow for sag and movement, then test
Gates sag on their hinges, rattle in the wind and don't always close to exactly the same spot. Close and latch the gate, check the gap, and open and shut it a few times while watching the Trackpac app to confirm each open and close arrives. That also confirms the LoRaWAN signal reaches the gate.
Set the open-too-long time
Choose how long the gate can reasonably stand open for normal use. The alarm time can be changed remotely over LoRaWAN, so you can adjust it later - for example at harvest or lambing, when gates stay open for longer on purpose - without a trip to the gate.
Trackpac can alert on gate opened or closed, the open-too-long alarm and battery level, by email, SMS or push notification. Rules can target tags, so every gate tagged "Home farm" shares the same rules, and a new gate added to the tag picks them up automatically.
The core rule for field gates. A gate opened for a vehicle and shut again stays quiet; one left standing open sends an alert.
An opened rule with a time window, for example evenings, overnight and weekends, alerts on any opening of a compound or yard gate when nobody should be there.
When the gate shuts, the "resolved" message tells everyone who got the alert that it's been dealt with, so two people don't both drive out to the same field.
The battery is rated for up to 10 years, but a busy gate uses it faster. A low-battery rule warns you so you can replace it before the sensor stops reporting.
A trigger-lock interval stops a gate that keeps being opened and shut from sending a stream of alerts, and because alerts can go to more than one person, the stockman, the yard manager and the farmer can all be on the list - each choosing email, SMS or push.
The LDS03A is built to live outdoors: a weatherproof enclosure, an armoured, steel-sheathed cable, and an operating range from -40°C to +85°C, so a hard frost won't stop it. It sends over LoRaWAN, so there's no SIM card or Wi-Fi per gate. A gateway at the farmyard can often reach outlying fields, but hills, woodland and buildings all reduce range - read what to check about LoRaWAN coverage before you plan. If a gate drops out of coverage for a while, the sensor stores its events and sends them once the network is back.
See Trackpac pricing for the subscription. If you're monitoring gates in remote fields, the same network can also report water tank levels - see farm water tank monitoring with the TEK 766.
Get Started
One LDS03A per gate, with the contact on the post and the magnet on the gate - reporting every opening to Trackpac, with an alert to your phone when a gate stays open too long or a yard gate opens out of hours.
Yes. The LDS03A uses a heavy-duty magnetic contact rated to work across a gap of about 30-45mm on iron and steel, and about 10-30mm on wood, so it suits both metal and wooden field gates. Fit the contact on the gatepost and the magnet on the gate's closing edge, then check the gap with the gate shut and latched - gates sag and move, so allow for that when you position the magnet.
Only if you want one. The LDS03A reports every open and close, but your Trackpac alert rules decide what reaches your phone. For field gates, most people alert only on the open-too-long alarm, so a gate opened briefly for a tractor stays quiet and a gate left open raises an alarm. For yard gates, you can add an out-of-hours rule that alerts on any opening outside working hours.
No. The sensor records when the gate opened and closed and how long it stayed open, not who opened it. That history is still useful: it shows the time a gate was left open, which you can compare with when contractors, deliveries or staff were on site.
Often, but it depends on the terrain. A LoRaWAN gateway at the farmyard can often cover outlying fields, but hills, woodland and buildings reduce range, so check the first open and close reach the Trackpac dashboard before you leave a gate. If coverage drops for a while, the LDS03A stores events and sends them when the network is back.
The Dragino LDS03A is sold by Hexaspot, Trackpac's sister company in the Connect IoT group, for €59.92 ex VAT, with VAT added at checkout based on your country. Choose the 'Trackpac Ready' option and the sensor is pre-registered on Trackpac, so you only need to scan its QR code. A Trackpac subscription from £15 / €18 per sensor per year covers connectivity, the dashboard, alerts and data storage.
Planning gate alerts across a farm, estate or several yards? Get in touch and we'll help you plan sensors and coverage.
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