Arable Release Notes

Date: June 8, 2020
Scope: General Release
OS Support: iOS 11, 12, 13; Android 7, 8 and 9
Language Support: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Ukrainian and Polish
Screen Size & Resolution: Minimum 540 x 960 pts screen resolution and 4.5” screen size
Type of Release: Major
Version: iOS 3.0.0, Android 3.0.0

Release Overview

Arable Mobile 3.0.0 is a major release introducing the concept of growing seasons for GDD calculations, a new alerts history log, and wind forecasts based on remote sensed data.

New Features

• A new Alerts tab (My Alerts page) was introduced in Arable Mobile 3.0.0. It functions as a history log and has the same content as the activity log in Arable Web. Alerts that are unread are shown with a color icon in the list, while read alerts have a grey icon. Alerts are by default shown in date order with the most recent first. Tapping the filter icon on the right top corner of the screen also allows users to choose to see just weather, device or account alerts. Users are automatically subscribed to device alerts (e.g., location updates) and account alerts (username, phone number, password change), and can opt in to weather alerts via the Account tab (Web) or the Settings page (Mobile). The weather alert subscriptions in this release are associated with all locations the user has access to; a future release will allow subscriptions tailored to individual locations. Weather alerts are still focused around heat spikes and frost events, as in the previous release; however, a new feature in this release is the option for the org admin to set custom thresholds via the Account tab (Web) or the Settings page (Mobile). Default thresholds remain 36°C and 2°C, respectively. While the subscriptions in Arable Mobile refer to Mobile push notifications, this release enables SMS and/or voice calling as other alert channel types in Arable Web. Note that for SMS/voice alerts to work, it is important to ensure that a phone number has been set on the Account tab (Web) and that SMS/voice calling are provided in your country (see info modal on the Account tab in Arable Web for details). There you will also find the phone numbers from which Arable will send SMS/voice alerts. It is recommended that you add these numbers into your phone contacts in order to avoid ignoring the alert calls. It should be noted that the SMS/voice alerts are shown in English language only in this release.
• A new growing seasons feature has been added to allow users to define a start and end date for the calculating Growing Degree Days (GDD). The GDD calculation will use the temperature settings °C or °F already set up on the Account tab (Web) or the Settings page (Mobile). Users select the appropriate crop type and varietal on the Seasons tab in Arable Web; this selection will determine the standard values used for base and high temperature thresholds, which are shown below the crop type field. Users also have the option to define their own set of growth stage thresholds on the Seasons tab, which will populate the GDD count for the current growing season on the Map page. On the Graph page in Arable Web, users can use the Time feature to select which growing season to graph, and they can compare GDD count and growth stage status across Mark devices with similar growing seasons. The Plant tab in a device’s location details page shows an additional GDD graph, which indicates the selected crop type and growth stages. Future releases will add GDD backfill and forecasting based on remote sensed data; enable GDD alerts based on set growth stage thresholds; and allow for data export using the growing season as a selector.
• Arable Mobile now shows daily and hourly wind forecast data in the spray timing drop-down (daily and hourly). Daily forecast spans 10 days and hourly shows through the end of tomorrow. Measurement units are mph, km/h, or m/s, found on the Settings tab. The forecast is based on remote sensed data, so it is always available even if the Mark does not have a local wind anemometer.
• Precip, ETc and CWD values have increased to a granularity of 0.1 mm to more closely align with the similar granularity already available in inches.
• In all detailed drop-down pages with hourly expansion, there is now a green marker in today’s hourly list for the current hour (in local device time) to help with readability.
• Google Analytics tracking is enabled to help Arable Customer Success better understand and support users having the Arable Mobile application. In this release, events where implemented for:
  - Alerts_Screen_Open
  - Show_Me_Selected
  - Heat_Alert_Status_Changed
  - Frost_Alert_Status_Changed
  - Alert_Details_Open
  - Alert_Filter_Changed
  - Push_Notification_Open
  - Heat_Alert_Threshold_Changed
  - Frost_Alert_Threshold_Changed

Defect Fixes

• The Support page is now updated to provide information in other languages. These are shown below the initial English language section.
• Arable Mobile will now display a new Mark in List and Map views within one minute of a successful Mark 2 deployment. This is enabled because the backend no longer waits to get a complete sensor reading dataset; a side effect is that many measurement screens will show “--” while the initial data are being compiled.
• In Arable Mobile 2.1.0, after initial device deployment but before data was transmitted to the backend for the first time, temperatures were shown as “0” instead of "--" in the list on the My Operation page. This has been fixed.
• Hourly forecasted temperature is now available for all of tomorrow in the Heat Spikes & Frost Events drop-downs. Previous release only showed a forecast of 16 hours.
• Previously, the Irrigation drop-down null value for crop water deficit was “0,” which was incongruous with normal “--” format. It has been updated.
• Arable Mobile has been hardened in terms of handling invalid dates in the temperature forecast if they occur from the backend.
• We had an occurrence where Arable Mobile 2.1.0 did not display data for a user. The root cause was an API call to the backend. This was resolved by removing the device ID when calling the “data/daily“ endpoint.
• The Search page had some minor layout issues for Samsung phones when searching an untitled location. This is now fixed so it is possible to complete the search.
• Previously, Arable Mobile would show English as the selected language, while another language was shown in the UI. That occurred even if another language had been set and the user opened the language selection dialog, didn’t change anything, and tapped Save. This has been corrected so that the selected language is the language displayed in the UI.

Known Issues

• Wind data is currently only populated if a local anemometer is installed. A future release will also include fill-in wind data if a local anemometer is not available, as well as additional remote-sensed forecasts.
• The Wind data as shown in the Arable Mobile Map is the average for today. This is planned to be changed to current wind to be more actionable in a future release.
• Users with 500+ locations in their account can run into a memory issue when scrolling down to the end of the Daily list screen.
• When the user changes the settings data from the web or on a different phone, they will need to go back to the Settings page in Arable Mobile to get the measurement units updated in the Map and elsewhere.
• We do not take into account forecast data for max/min temperature values on the current date in the My Operations page Daily list as we do in the location-specific detailed pages, creating the possibility of data inconsistency between the two pages.
• The max/min temperature for the hour is taken as the max/min of all 5-minute interval readings during that hour. Meanwhile, the current temperature is averaged for the last hour, creating a discrepancy between the two values during weather alerts. We are investigating whether relying on a 5-min interval for Tmin/Tmax is vulnerable to noise, and if so will change this algorithm.
• Terms & Conditions are e-mailed in English, regardless of what language is registered.
• When first navigating to the Map view after install, users have the option to let Arable Mobile track My Location in the background. This option comes with the use of Google Maps. It is recommended to only select tracking when the app is in use to reduce battery drain.
• If a user enters an incorrect user ID, there is no error message shown on the login page, nor is there when scrolling the same page with incorrect user ID.
• Push notifications will be presented based on the language configured on the phone and not based on the language set in Arable Mobile. A future implementation could change this behavior once we are able to keep the Mobile language selection in the backend.
• When clicking on a notification, the app will navigate to either the Heat Spikes or Frost Events pages, but it won’t open the hourly records and point out the current hour row. This behavior will be improved in the coming releases of the weather alerts feature.
• The soil moisture reading on the Irrigation details page banner provides the weekly average. In a future release, we will change this to show the current hour.
• We have seen occasions on the iPhone when Arable Mobile is in a constant loading state when coming from the background. These cases seem to be related to switching between wi-fi and cellular or low cellular signal conditions. This is being investigated further for a resolution in the next release.
• On the Arable Mobile Irrigation page, users may see small differences between the daily and hourly precipitation data for the tomorrow row. This will be reviewed for the next release.