Entering Temperature in Mobile App

In my last blog entry, we identified temperature sensors as being a low-cost sensor providing valuable information to barn workers, managers and analysts in a livestock operation.  If installing sensors and connecting them to the cloud is not in the cards but the data would be valuable to collect perhaps the mobile app is a worthwhile option.

Select the temperature icon from the customize-able list of options.

Select the Group reporting.  This is a drop-down based upon groups your user-id has access to update.  Timestamp is set at the current timestamp, cannot be edited in the standard option.  Then an decimal entry field for low (required), average (not required) and high (required).  Most barn controllers will have options for a user to look at the previous day's high and low reading.

Once the data is collected in the cloud, charts showing the data over time are standard.  Other analytics are also possible as we discussed in the last blog entry.

The mobile app option is an improvement over just leaving the data in the barn on the controller.  Some of the improvements are:

1.  A requirement for the barn workers to look at the temperature every day.

2.  Getting the data into the cloud gives you flexibility and centralization to your process improvements efforts.  Also an ability to correlate data to other interesting data like feed, water, and mortalities to name a few.

3.  If barn workers are not doing the work each day, you can structure alerts around missing data.  If a barn worker does not enter temperature for 30 hours an alert goes to their direct supervisor.  If 72 hours passes it escalates to a manager.  Rapid feedback of compliance issues.

The mobile app still has some potential flaws, including:

1.  Barn workers may falsify data entries if it makes them look bad.  Difficult to prosecute.

2.  Actionable alerts are delayed versus real time sensor data.

In conclusion, logging temperature data in a mobile app is a low-cost step for well-run producers to more easily collect on-farm data into the cloud for analytics or push into their own enterprise systems.  For poorer managed sites, it is a step in the right direction for behavior and process improvement.  FarmStreams mobile app runs on both Android and IOS.  Contact us to set up your site today.