Orenda 4.0 is a complete rebuild of the Orenda app from scratch, in a a cleaner, cross-platform code base. It not only makes the app easier to update and de-bug, it unlocks enormous potential for pool owners and professionals alike.
00:00 - Introduction
02:48 - The evolution of our mobile app
04:36 - Cleaning up the code
06:17 - Cross-platform
07:40 - Bugs you have helped us find (and fix) so far
10:15 - Privacy, anonymous survey, and one infuriated app user
15:05 - Integrations with other software
19:34 - The Orenda app only exists because of people like you
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107. The Orenda App v.4.0 - updates, integrations, and its future
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Hello and welcome back to The Rule Your Pool podcast. Or if you've been following us on Facebook lately, the Ruin Your Pool podcast. Or maybe because the pool is so green, it's the Rule Your Pond podcast. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you could follow us on Facebook. It's Orenda Technologies. I did a thing. I bought a fixer upper house that has a pool, and this pool is garbage.
[00:00:30] And I've never wanted a pool. But when I saw this house, I thought, okay, it's in a really good neighborhood, but this pool, we could do something with this. This pool could be renovated, it could be made really nice. But before it's made nice, we can destroy this pool. And I will do some episodes talking about the pool and what we're going to do, and I have this big vision for it. We're partnering with Watershape University, and Pentair, and Wet Edge and a few other companies to do something really special and not only show you installation videos and how to, but to show you what not to do to a pool.
[00:01:04] Let's destroy this thing on purpose. I'm going to put food coloring and muriatic acid and column pour it with an underwater GoPro and show you what that does. I'm going to put trichlor tabs on the floor. Let's show what not to do.
[00:01:16] And to those of you on Facebook following, thank you so much. I've gotten so many good ideas. Many of them borderline illegal, some of them completely illegal, but I still like the ideas. Um, I'm not putting Tannerite in the pool to blow it up. As cool as that would be, I'm not Joe Exotic and this is not Tiger King.
[00:01:33] But the ideas keep flowing in and we do have some really cool things to do to this pool, and I'm going to video them and I'm going to show you why you don't do these things. With all the safety precautions necessary, et cetera, I'm going to do my best. I'm not exactly myth busters here, but there are a lot of things that I don't care about doing because if we're going to resurface the pool and we're going to resurface the deck and redo all the equipment, why not destroy it?
[00:01:58] Right? So it's going to be the Ruin Your Pool podcast for a few episodes there. But we'll also have these things on YouTube as well.
[00:02:05] But today's episode, I want to talk about the Orenda app version 4.0. Last summer, we released version 3.0. But 4.0, while it doesn't look that much different from 3.0, it's actually the biggest update we've ever done. And I want to address the updates that we did, the integrations, and the future of the app. So I'm doing this one alone. We actually had this 107th episode recorded with Terry Arko from last week, but the audio was so bad it was unusable. So we'll have to record that episode another time and we'll get back to that topic.
[00:02:41] But for now, episode 107, Orenda app, version 4.0. Let's do it.
The evolution of our mobile app
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[00:02:48] Eric Knight: Over the years, the Orenda app has gone through several integrations with various development teams, et cetera. Behind the scenes was a lot of code. It was a lot of different coding languages. And in Orenda 3.0, we came out with this whole host of new features like the secondary readings, the pH ceiling, the updated, supremely accurate LSI calculation, and the formulas behind that. All of that was great. It's been operating really nicely, but we still had two different versions. We had the Android version and we had the iOS version.
[00:03:48] And then if you tried to go on a tablet like an iPad or an Android tablet, it looked completely different, right? So you could never really get them to look the same or behave the same. And if there was a bug, maybe it was only on Android or maybe it was only on iOS, and then you'd have to find it. And it took a lot of work to troubleshoot it, it was very frustrating.
[00:04:07] And we really rely on you, our listeners, and our users, to tell us when you have problems. So please continue to do that. If you see a bug, email me: podcast@orendatech.com. Please include screenshots if you do find a bug.
[00:04:23] But it got frustrating because we had at least five different coding languages to deal with. And so that's multiple developers, because not every developer can write in all those languages. And it just got into this cluttered mess.
Cleaning up the code
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[00:04:36] Eric Knight: Now the app looked great and it functioned for the most part very well. But behind the scenes we had some housekeeping to do. That's the dirty truth. It, you know, you develop an app and you learn what to do as you go.
[00:04:50] So while Orenda 3.0 came out and in my estimation was the best update we had ever done. It was certainly the biggest. Orenda 4.0 actually puts that to shame. This one I'm really excited about. Because in this one, while it looks almost identical to Orenda 3.0, we actually completely scrapped the old app and wrote this from a blank screen. We wrote it from scratch. In a common coding language, which is why Android now looks identical to iOS.
[00:05:25] Back when we started, we didn't really know how to do that. We didn't think it was an option. Not being software developers, we didn't know what we didn't know. But it became more clear as we started fleshing out this vision of what we wanted to do with this app. Because unlike our podcast, which has, I'm guessing about 128 listeners now, growing steadily though, we have a lot of app users.
[00:05:49] We have a lot of people to make happy, to make sure that it's operating multiple times a day for the pool pro, no matter where they are, whether they have cell signal or not. People are depending on this calculator to work. And we got to a point where there were too many bugs in little areas of the app that made the user experience worse, and we were looking at what could this app be in the bigger picture?
Cross-platform
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[00:06:17] Eric Knight: So we decided we needed to make it compatible with both Android and iOS, and that's what we did. So instead of having a different coding language for the calculator, the backend, the formula, the user interface, the buttons, the embedded videos, the APIs, all these things were just kind of hodgepodged together.
[00:06:36] All of this is now in one common coding language in one code stack. That's a beautiful thing. Now, if you're a software developer, this is probably second nature to you, but for most of you listening, you probably have no idea what I just said. And that's fine. Just know that everything behind the Orenda app now is in one place.
[00:06:55] It's cleaned up. We've cut our amount of code and it's now running smoother. It feels really, really good. And there are a lot of benefits for that. So, for instance, if there's a problem, we can find it faster. We know exactly where to find issues, fix them quickly. One fix goes to every device. Android, iOS, doesn't matter. That's a huge advantage.
[00:07:18] We're very excited about it. It was a ton of work to do, so thanks to everybody involved. You know who you are. And the feedback from you, our listeners and our customers. When you had issues, you sent me emails, you're awesome. Thank you for your patience. Because instead of just chewing us out for having bugs, and there's a lot in our app, like we don't know where all the bugs are and I don't use an Android phone.
Bugs you have helped us find (and fix) so far
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[00:07:40] Eric Knight: So thank you. If you have bugs, again, please tell me. Email me podcast@orendatech.com. Include screenshots, be very specific with what you have and we can get it fixed quickly. One such bug, which we did resolve, was when we switched to the new coding language in order to make it completely reactive to every screen. And let me explain what that is for a second. iPhones are always in the same basic aspect ratio. There's only a few sizes of them. Androids have different manufacturers. You can have an LG, you can have a Samsung, you can have a Motorola, you can have a whatever. And so the screen sizes are all over the place. You have like dozens and dozens of different screen sizes and shapes. That's really hard to design for.
[00:08:26] So in order to make an app look good, especially a rectangular calculator so that all the dials fit and numbers aren't scrunched, we had to make it reactive so it fits your screen. Well, when you do that, you subvert to the phone's native accessibility settings. So for instance, if you have bigger fonts in your phone's native settings for texts and emails and everything else, that would override our app. That would make the numbers on the dials bigger and you'd start to get overlap. Words were too big and it just looked really bad. Well, that's because we made it a reactive screen.
[00:09:08] That has since been fixed. We have since overrode that and said, no, the phone's accessibility settings are not going to change this. So if you are seeing overlapped text, make sure you have the most recent Orenda app version. And if it's still doing it, email it to me. I need to know what kind of phone you have. We got to get that resolved. It shouldn't be happening, but the only way we find all these bugs is if we have your help and we're grateful for it. I do not want to take it for granted.
[00:09:33] Of course, we want to have a bug free app, but as you know, software changes, software platforms change their rules, et cetera. Things break over time. So if you notice something, say something, please tell us and that's how we're going to make sure that this app is always reliable for you. So thank you.
[00:09:50] Another thing is you might notice that the dials on iOS, they don't spin quite as well as they did before, because in version 3.0 we had this nice haptic sort of clicking of the dials. And that feature isn't available in this reactive coding language yet. We hope it will be soon, and as soon as it is, we're going to re-implement it again because that was a cool thing. But it's a small price to pay for all the other benefits that we got.
Privacy, anonymous survey, and one infuriated app user
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[00:10:15] Eric Knight: Now I do want to address something because I made a commitment in a private email to a very irate and rude former customer of ours.
[00:10:25] Well, supposedly a customer, I'm not sure they ever were a customer, but they said they were, and they're never buying Orenda again. And they're deleting the app and they're cutting us out. Because we had the audacity to put an anonymous survey at the beginning of our app when you first download it. And yes, in 3.0 we had the same survey. We didn't get the emails back then, but in 4.0 we crossed the line.
[00:10:47] like There's a way to address your concerns and frustrations with us like an adult. And we can take that. If you have problems, please just tell us. We want to hear your concerns. We want to be aware of it because we care about you. We care about your privacy deeply. This person doesn't seem to think so.
[00:11:04] And so I do want to set the record straight on this. I'm going to actually read his entire email, and just because he was so rude to us does not mean that I need to be rude to him. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. I'm going to read this email, but I'm going to have the courtesy to leave his name out of it. He's probably not listening to this, but I'm not going to mention who it is. But there's a lesson in this and that's why I'm going to read this. Okay. So this comes from, John Doe we'll say.
[00:11:30] Subject: outrageous.
[00:11:33] It is outrageous and unethical for you to be gathering information from pool pros as the required survey does on the app now. Orenda has always played both sides of the fence as both a supplier and a competitor to pool pros. This survey and its data that it requests has gone too far. I will no longer stock our trucks with Orenda products and will most certainly express my disappointment in Orenda to SCP management. Sincerely, John Doe.
[00:12:03] Yeah, he's uh, He's not happy about our survey, as you can see. So I responded and admittedly I was pretty sarcastic about it because at first I kind of thought he was kidding. But then he responds with this:
[00:12:15] It isn't enough for you to have greater sales of your product because of the effort put into the videos and podcast. No. Now you require people that have used your app for several years to provide proprietary information to continue using the app. That IS outrageous. And then turn around and threaten to read my email on your podcast. Your sarcasm reveals a lot about you and by extension, your company.
[00:12:41] Yeah. Well, he is right about that. I was sarcastic in my response, I'm not going to lie. But I'm bringing this up because A, I told him I was going to. I told him I was going to read this on the podcast and, uh, I'm a man of my word.
[00:12:57] But more importantly, instead of asking why we have the survey, he assigned intentions of why we have the survey, as if they were nefarious. In reality, it's the opposite of that. The truth is, as we grow this app, we want to be able to serve you better.
[00:13:14] And so we thought if we could just figure out how many homeowners we have, how many residential pros and commercial pools, and approximately how many pools do you treat? And then location, meaning city and state. It would be really helpful to know we have this percentage of this type of person. Maybe we should cater some content towards them.
[00:13:32] Maybe we should, you know, pivot what we're talking about so that we can serve this demographic that we haven't been serving or whatever it is. That would be helpful to us. But here's the dirty truth of it. We could have done the login with Google, Facebook, whatever. And we may have to do that in the future. That's the truth. We just may have to, because the constraints of technology, if we're going to be able to do what we want to do in the future, we don't collect that data. Unfortunately, big tech will have it. But then again, pretty much every software you have and every app already has that stuff, so it's kind of ambiguous.
[00:14:04] But the point is this. In order to provide the service that we want you to be able to use, there has to be some sort of login mechanism to get those enhanced features.
[00:14:14] What we have now is free, and it always will be. We're not going to make you pay for what we've already built. And he even says it in his email like, it's not enough for you to profit on your products. Now you require people that have used your app for several years.
[00:14:29] Well, okay, let's just pause there, dude. You've been using a free app for several years. If you don't think that the games that you have on your phone collect your personal data, you're kidding yourself. Advertisers sell that stuff all the time. Watch the social dilemma on Netflix. It's scary. We don't do that. We don't like that. We do not want to be that company. We care about our privacy and we care about yours. We just want to know generally what type of people are using our app. And I don't think that's too much to ask.
Integrations with other software
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[00:15:05] Eric Knight: But I digress. Now, let's talk about some integrations. One of the main reasons we rebuilt the app was to look into the future. We thought for years about building our own routing software, and when I say years, like way back before there were routing softwares. And now there's over a dozen of them and they're good. And these are software people. They're going to do it better than we could do it. We're not going to get into that spot.
[00:15:28] But years ago we thought it would be really nice, since people kept asking us to save chemistry, chemistry history, that kind of thing. What other features could we build? Well, we were kind of pigeonholed into what we had because of how the code base was built. That we couldn't really do that. We didn't have the ability with our servers to handle the mass of users and all that stuff. It would've required a big change.
[00:15:52] But thankfully we don't have to. Because these softwares exist. Um, for the homeowners out there, as far as I know, there isn't one for you yet. But for the pool professional out there, you have a lot to pick from. And so of these companies, most of them have actually contacted us directly with interest in integrating the Orenda Calculator into their app. Because thanks to you, you've been asking them for this. Thank you. By the way.
[00:16:18] You've been asking for LSI calculations and dosing calculations and, and apps can build their own. There are dosing charts out there. But is it the same? Or is it going to yield the same results as the Orenda calculator? And the answer is no, because we have a proprietary formula that took a long time, and we had help building it. It is a very, very precise calculator.
[00:16:39] So in order to have that LSI be a universal standard, what we did is we built an API. You don't need to know what that means, but software people do. So as soon as this summer, apps will be able, if they want to, they can come to us. We are going to be licensing out this LSI calculator so that it can be integrated into their apps.
[00:17:04] The first company to do so is Pool Service Software. We've done an episode with Gus from Pool Service Software before. He was the one who gave us this idea. Helped guide us in how to do it, but he understands that we are sort of Switzerland in this case. We want to be able to reach every customer regardless of the software they use.
[00:17:22] PSS is the first one to come out with it, and it should be coming out pretty soon. The whole idea is you're going to have a calculator. It looks similar to ours, but it's going to say Powered by Orenda. And it is using our formula. It is an extension of what we have built.
[00:17:37] So you will have those same accurate readings so that if you are a PSS user, for instance, you don't have to bounce between multiple apps to get your dosing calculations and LSI. It's going to populate in PSS for you. And in the future with other apps, if they integrate, you'll have the same ability.
[00:17:56] And that's really up to them. Some of them will build their own, but the way you'll be able to tell is if it doesn't say Powered by Orenda, if it doesn't have our logo on that calculator, it's not ours. So you may get a different result because again, we're the only ones with our exact formula.
[00:18:12] But the fact that you're even using LSI is a win. We're very happy about that. So whether it's ours or somebody else's, that's awesome. And there are other LSI calculators out there. So we just encourage you to be thinking about the holistic balance of water, whether it's with our app or not. But what this allows us to do is give you a more cohesive user experience without us having to build the entire thing.
[00:18:33] So you get comfortable with whatever software you like, and then we'll be able to sort of infuse our calculator to enhance that software. And that's really cool. And we weren't able to do that until we did this rebuild. But now we're, we're able to do it. We're here. To be honest, I am so excited to see what these softwares are going to do with what we've built.
[00:18:55] Like they're going to build upon it and make it better. And they're software experts. We're not, we're a chemistry company. But for years we've been asked can we store chemistry readings? And save chemistry history? Or some variation of that. Remember last time's readings? Et cetera. And we've wanted so bad to build it. It's just, it's a lot harder than it sounds. And it was a big pivot for us.
[00:19:17] We weren't really structured for that. But these softwares are. And they can take this to the next level and I think it's going to help all the pool professionals be more efficient and deliberate in what they do. So if you are out in the field, it's going to be a really good thing. It's going to help you rule more pools.
The Orenda app only exists because of users like you
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[00:19:34] Eric Knight: No more show notes on this one. I'm just speaking to you directly. Orenda 4.0 was the first step. It was a huge step. It took the better part of a year, and it would not have been possible had we not had all of the inputs from you, our listeners, and our customers.
[00:19:52] It's so true. Thank you. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for listening. Thank you for the feedback to let us know that you're listening. We are so grateful and humbled that we're able to help you grow your business and you know, it's spring opening season, so calculator works well. Use it. It will help you. Get out there, have a wonderful season.
[00:20:12] Might want to follow along on Facebook, Orenda Technologies, because my pool is green and we're about to bomb it. It's going to happen pretty soon. And, uh, kind of track along with what we do with this project and how to ruin it. It should be fun. Take care.