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The last couple months we have been working hard updating both our iOS and Android app. A main reason is to use the hardware accelerated (OpenGL on Android and Metal on iOS) charting library SciChart which is super fast even when plotting huge amounts of data (10+ tags on the same screen for example). Its recent release in April 2020 features spline to connect data points for aesthetically pleasing presentation. We have finished this for Wireless Tag iOS app at version 4.x which was released about a month ago. 

While our iOS app has always had solid reputation being functional and smooth (not surprising considering the thousands of man-hour we have put into its development since 2012) and it is written in Objective C which is a low level programming language / native code, we did not put too much resources into developing "native" Android app until now.

Today we are pleased to announce our first major Android app update (stable at version 3.1.14) since mid 2019.  The assumptions we made when designing this update are:

  • You would do the work setting up the tags typically on a PC (associate, configuring arm/diarm schedule, temperature logging interval, monitoring thresholds, setting up notifications, etc)
  • You mostly use mobile apps to check recent event history and  temperature/humidity, and occasionally sending temperature report or graph to other people. Some limited amount of setup fine tuning. 

The app now has 3 pages switched by swiping, the 3rd page is still a wrapper of the HTML web interface like the old 2.x version, therefore you can do all the setup you do on an PC/web browser with the app if you want.

Pressing back button takes you to 2nd page, which is completely written in native code. It gives you a glance of all the important information, except motion events, which is on the 1st page, along with temperature events.  The app will only load data from the cloud when you try to view it.  As soon as you view the 1st page and scroll down to load enough data into the past, when you go back to the 2nd page they will appear also on the graphs, helping you identifying reason behind temperature/humidity changes (such as door open/close). These should be familiar if you have used iOS version of our app. 

If you press on the graph in 2nd page you can access all of the stats / graph features without going to the web user interface. On the other hand, if you like to setup a tag, just tap on the current temperature display (left of the graph) on 2nd page, it will take you directly to the section for that tag in the web interface. If you tap on the icon it will allow you to assign a picture directly. 

If you quit the app (e.g. by keep pressing back button) when the chosen page is not the web (3rd page), next time the app is launched, the web interface will not be loaded at app launch, and only loaded when you swiped into it, so you should notice the app launches much faster than old version of the app which required loading the HTML interface to do anything.  

If you have many tags, you can enter search term in the search box, then keep the search box open and swipe left/right and the event & web interface will automatically only show the tags matching the search. Some people mentioned they wanted to have a per tag motion event history display. For this, just enter the name of tag in search box (the autocomplete will help you enter the full name with a few key strokes) then swipe to the event history if you are not already on it. 

If you have any suggestions, comments, or like to correct our "assumptions" above on how the app is used, please leave a comment. 

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 We have worked very hard past few weeks to bring you a new app mode called "Trends": 

It is available in web and Android interface right now by clicking the "Temperatures" button on the upper right corner, and on iPhone/iPad app (version 3.0.0, expected to appear in App Store sometime later today), by swiping to the left, or pressing the "Trends" button on the tag list screen. 

The mode summarizes each sensor's temperature, humidity and ambient light, along with recent trend in a carefully designed layout. If monitoring is enabled, the too hot/cold regions are displayed on graph with red shadows, too wet/dry region by green shadows and too bright/dark region by blue shadows to show how much margin there is to abnormal conditions.

If event history was viewed (loaded), motion events such as "opened", "detected" are overlaid on the recent temperature graph, to help visualize possible causes of temperature spikes (iOS only).

Special server side data structure was designed such that recent data points used for this screen is always readily available, to ensure very fast screen load speed. 

We have overhauled much of our iOS app, so that it loads faster and supports iOS 12. On iPads, the split screen width now automatically adjusts to an optimal value, depending on what is displayed. App will automatically resume updating screen as sensor data comes in, when network connectivity is interrupted and later restored (the Web/Android version was already behaving this way). 

We are all ears for your feedback, and any ideas to make the app work even better for you. 

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