Jarred and Eric talk about the release of the Orenda App update, version 5.0. It features the new bluetooth integration with the LaMotte WaterLink Spintouch® test kit, a brand new chemical calculator, and a login for future saving of results.
00:00 - Introduction
01:23 - What's new in the Orenda App version 5.0?
05:43 - LaMotte SpinTouch integration
13:43 - The new Chemical Calculator
17:08 - Login is required for these new features
22:07 - Demonstrating the new Chemical Calculator
27:08 - The website Orenda Calculator™
30:35 - Closing
[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Welcome back everybody to the Rule Your Pool podcast. This is episode number 146. The number is getting so high I actually had to look at my show notes to know which episode that was. And with me today is somebody who has never once read our show notes. And that would be Jarred. Jarred, back to the show.
[00:00:15] Jarred Morgan: I was happy to be here. I was about to say, uh, I looked at my show notes as well.
[00:00:20] Eric Knight: Yeah. Yeah, I know. I know you did. That's, it's, it's this thing that we do on the show. It's a,
[00:00:27] Jarred Morgan: It's all up here, Eric. It's just
[00:00:29] all up here.
[00:00:29] Eric Knight: You know, maybe he's born with it.
[00:00:31] Jarred Morgan: That's it. That's all I got.
[00:00:33] Eric Knight: In today's episode, we're going to talk about the big app release that we just did. And as you know, Jarred, we flew our developer from overseas and he and I spent five days in a row. It was a lot of work, 10 plus hour days, we're just kind of sprinting to get this thing done.
[00:00:50] And we want to talk about that today, not only what is in version 5.0, but some of the mistakes that we made in it. And some of the things we've learned, and what is to come. So, Do you have anything you want to say before we get into episode 146?
[00:01:06] Jarred Morgan: I am pretty excited about this topic specifically. And I think the app updates going to be, it's going to be awesome. I think it's going to add a lot of value to our users. I think it's going to add a lot of value to the industry to make things more precise, which is obviously our, our, main goals and objectives. let's get into it.
[00:01:22] Eric Knight: Let's go.
[00:01:23] Eric Knight: Jarred, many years ago, we started this path of what could we do with the app? Where could we go? And we were a calculator. We didn't really have the technical skills, and we certainly had technical limitations based on our code base being in several different languages. The Android app was different from the iOS app.
[00:02:05] Not to get too technical with the audience, but we are not a software company. And I said this two episodes ago in episode 144, I believe, where I said, full transparency. We're telling you what's coming, we're going to talk about what we just released and what is to come, because this is just phase one of three.
[00:02:21] There's more really cool stuff coming down the line, but all of this is made possible because of you. Our customers, our listeners, our app users. If not for you, we would not be diverting our attention and resources to creating this. If people were hardly using the calculator, what would be our motivation?
[00:02:40] You know, there's other calculators out there. That's true. There are other websites out there. There's other podcasts out there. And we encourage people to look at different sources of information and compare. We did an episode a while back. I don't remember exactly which one it was. In fact, I can scroll down and we talked about, oh yeah, episode 134 about the precision of the LSI calculation in our calculator. And that same logic goes to our dosing and all of that.
[00:03:08] Jarred Morgan: And to elaborate on Eric's point earlier, we do this for you guys, our customers and people that give us feedback. Because quite honestly, we don't know what to do here. We do what we want to do, but we get a lot of feedback on how we can improve things. Now, granted, we don't do all of them just because some things are not practical or a bad user experience or so forth.
[00:03:28] But if it makes good sense and enough people, and honestly, it doesn't take a whole lot. That request it if we can do it, we'll do it. If it adds value.
[00:03:38] Eric Knight: Yeah, for sure. We hear you. We hear your customer feedback. We see what you write to podcast@orendatech.com. We see the ticket submissions that you put in, if you have a question. You can submit your question on our help center, ask.orendatech.com. We see it. I read all of them.
[00:03:55] What we just released is going to be a benefit for, I believe all of our users. So let's get into three things I want to talk about. The first thing I want to talk about is we have integrated with the LaMotte WaterLink SpinTouch®. I spoke two episodes ago in 144 about integrating with a test kit. That's the test kit. It is the LaMotte WaterLink SpinTouch®.
[00:04:18] It is an awesome test kit. I have one right here. And I'm going to demonstrate how this integration works. It was not the easiest thing at first, but LaMotte has wonderful support, technical support. They were working with us each day on it, which was great.
[00:04:33] It sounds a lot simpler than it was just because of what we had. You know, if you plug it into a computer, it seems to be very easy. We have a mobile app. It wasn't quite as easy for us, but we got it done. And I think the user experience is quite easy now. So that's good.
[00:04:48] The second thing is we're going to talk about the brand new chemical calculator, and this is version one. This is phase one of three, so please be patient as we roll out these other features because they get progressively more complex as we go.
[00:05:02] Jarred Morgan: Not to be confused with the dosing calculator. It is a different calculator.
[00:05:05] Eric Knight: it is a different calculator. This is not the LSI and dosing calculator. This is called the chemical calculator, which is going to be the second option in the main menu. In the next update that we do, we're actually going to have to consolidate that menu. We have too many options on it. But if you're following along, this episode, if you're driving right now, It might be good if you listen again when you are available and not driving so that you can follow along in the app. Or maybe just pause this and listen to this later when you do have the availability to read the app.
[00:05:38] The third thing is the login. And the login enables us to do both of these two things.
[00:05:43] Eric Knight: So let's start with the LaMotte integration. Jarred, we have a very big customer and they are switching to this test kit. And was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. We've thought about it for a long time. We knew it was just, it was just a lot of work and we just didn't see the, uh, the priority for getting this integration done.
[00:06:03] Jarred Morgan: It's the tyranny of the urgent. And it's also one of those things that LaMotte has had an integration with their Bluetooth capabilities for quite some time. And to Eric's point, there's been a lot of other things going on. We've had a lot of upgraded things like redoing the entire code of the app.
[00:06:19] And it just, it was there. It wasn't a priority. And our customers have been requesting this for quite some time. Many years, to be honest. And we just never really got around to it. But as companies get bigger, you need to implement standard operating procedures.
[00:06:34] I know we've talked about this before in the past. And part of that standard operating procedure is to minimize the variance in testing and recording those results. And putting them into customer's files and so forth. And specifically this customer we're talking about found that the SpinTouch® was pretty easy to obviously make sure things were consistent, and they reduce their variabilities, and they get automatically load readings into their software system so they can put them in the customer's file.
[00:07:03] And they wanted to use our calculations on our app to be that basis. So we said, you know what? We've needed to do this for a long time
[00:07:12] Eric Knight: Yeah. And this test kit
[00:07:13] Jarred Morgan: that's what happened.
[00:07:13] Eric Knight: This test kit is very common in swimming pool stores. You'll see it at the counter oftentimes. Not really practical for a homeowner to have. This is great for a pool pro who's doing a lot of pools, certainly for a startup, but it's expensive. I mean, this is an electronic kit.
[00:07:27] I'll actually pull it out so you can see it. I have it in the case right now, but it's quite a robust piece of equipment. It's got a touchscreen on it. You lift up, you put this disc in. In fact, I'm going to demonstrate with this today, on camera. Because we are doing this on camera in spite of how good you look today, Jarred.
[00:07:44] have these little discs, and in each disc, I don't exactly understand what's in there, but I presume there's some sort of reagent. You just take a syringe of the sample of your water. It kind of feels like you're doing a medical procedure. And I'm just going to fill this up.
[00:08:01] Jarred Morgan: You're off camera. Move it over.
[00:08:03] Eric Knight: Oh, I'm sorry.
[00:08:04] Jarred Morgan: There you go.
[00:08:05] Eric Knight: Yeah. So I'm, I'm injecting it into this little space and now we're full. So now this disc is full of water. I'm going to put it in the SpinTouch®.
[00:08:18] So let me hold it up. And for those of you listening, you probably already know what this process is for, but for those of you who are watching on YouTube, um, you just take this little disc. And it fits in there. You put this little cover on it. It's called a universal disc cover. You know, I'd, I'd seen these things in the field for a long time, but I've never used one.
[00:08:42] And it says tap to test. So I'm just going to feel like you probably want that. You probably want that sitting on a table and flat so that you
[00:08:49] Yeah. I'm going to do that.
[00:08:50] Jarred Morgan: even distribution.
[00:08:52] Eric Knight: I don't know if you can hear that cranking up. But it's spinning. It takes about 60 seconds. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull up my app, my Orenda app. And when I first open it up, it's going to give me an alert that says, Hey, we've now integrated with LaMotte, go to settings, enable the Bluetooth. So I'm going to first go to my main menu and I'm going to You got to move it over to the right. You're just, you're just, I can see it. You're you, it's your aspect ratio. That's wrong. It's your screen.
[00:09:21] So I'm going to go down into the app settings and I'm going to enable the LaMotte SpinTouch®. And notice we have it hyperlinked. So if I type the hyperlink, here's a help center article walking you through the entire process.
[00:09:31] There's a video that's going to demonstrate this for you, and you can share this easily. It walks through the entire integration for you step by step. So if you have any questions, just tap the underline. Jarred, do you get a lot of questions that are answered if people would just tap the underlined words in the calculator? I mean, I get them every day.
[00:09:50] Jarred Morgan: Yes. That is just part of the gig, I guess.
[00:09:54] Eric Knight: Yeah, it'd be really nice if you just tap the underlined words in the Orenda calculator, because the answer is probably there.
[00:10:00] Okay. So now I have my test results and they are as follows. This is just drinking water. So it looks like my hardness is 39 and my cyanuric acid, it always says five, although that's zero because it cannot read below five is my understanding.
[00:10:17] This is drinking water, so there shouldn't be any CYA in it. I'm reading it backwards on the screen, but alkalinity looks like 43 pH is 8.1. The other day, the pH was 7.4 in the exact same sink. So maybe Charlotte water is changing their mind. But when I have my app open, watch what happens. You're going to see some figures at the bottom light up.
[00:10:40] Ready? Turn this on. And now that,
[00:10:44] Jarred Morgan: Move it over.
[00:10:45] Eric Knight: that arrow lights up.
[00:10:47] Jarred Morgan: Move over. Which just make the screen wider, man. You're killing the audience
[00:10:52] dude,
[00:10:53] Eric Knight: You're so this little arrow here.
[00:10:57] Jarred Morgan: Oh! There we go.
[00:10:58] Eric Knight: looks like a paper airplane. Okay. Now that is the export feature. Now, if I turn my app off, watch what happens. It's going to go away. Well, there's no more device to send it to, but if I turn it on and I get the app open, it turns on.
[00:11:11] So what I'm going to do is I'm going to push that arrow. Boop. And this pop up comes up immediately. And it says LaMotte SpinTouch is sending test results. Now I can accept or deny. I'm going to go ahead and accept. And boom, we have introduced some blue numbers. Now these blue numbers are not necessarily numbers that would be on the dials originally.
[00:11:33] For instance, alkalinity would go in increments of five. So 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, etc. But this one was 43. So we created a 43 and we made it blue. So every value that you see in here that's blue. That is coming from the LaMotte SpinTouch®. Now I can move these and it will remember. So I can change a value and then I can come back to it.
[00:11:58] Where is it? There it is. I can come back to this 39 that doesn't normally exist there. But if I do another test, like I'm at my next pool, it will override these blue numbers and delete them. So do your calculations at the pool that you're at pool pros, listening to this, that use the SpinTouch®. You only get these numbers if it's the most recent test that was submitted to the app. So keep that in mind.
[00:12:23] But yeah, this is how we can get very precise. And it's not like it's rounding to the nearest fifths. The formula that we use, as we discussed in that previous episode is very precise. So if we know that our calcium is 39 in this case, and our total alkalinity is 43, we have a very clear picture of where we need to be.
[00:12:44] What are your thoughts on it, Jarred? You've used it.
[00:12:46] Jarred Morgan: Uh, I have a high pitch squeal going on in the background. So I apologize in advance if you hear that,
[00:12:53] Eric Knight: Fire alarm or what?
[00:12:55] Jarred Morgan: vacuum.
[00:12:56] Eric Knight: Ah, nice.
[00:12:58] Jarred Morgan: Yes, I know. Um, but no, I mean, you're right. Kudos to our developer.
[00:13:02] Like I said, and the fact that it remembers the blue number is awesome. Obviously, if you notice in our app, everything's color coded for a reason. And that's one of those reasons. So you can refer back to it. And, uh, no, we've had questions about, can I input my numbers with a 8.35 or a 42 alkalinity? And the reason we've never done that is because it would be a bad user experience.
[00:13:26] It would take up too much space. It would just clutter things up a lot. So this made that integration pretty seamless cause it's, it's an automatic. Just spit it in. We're not having any input screens. And like I said, it makes it more precise, which is what we are definitely wanting to stand behind.
[00:13:43] Eric Knight: That's right. Well, speaking of precision. Let's move on now to the chemical calculator. Now, as I said earlier, this is version one of three. It's a building block. We are taking it further than this, but in order to build what we really want to build, this is sort of the foundation. And the premise came from questions that we get from pool pros and homeowners alike that would say, you know, what's a gallon of bleach going to do to my pool?
[00:14:11] Or what is this one pound bag of shock going to do to my pool? Or if I had a 50 pound bag of calcium chloride on the startup, what's that going to be? And the reason I think we were getting those questions is those are product quantities that you can buy, but the Orenda app goes from part per million to desired part per million.
[00:14:29] Jarred Morgan: Well, it'll give a prescription of what you're adding to get from point A to point B.
[00:14:34] Eric Knight: But the logic behind that, we can do that math in a different way. We can do the same formula, but we can reverse it. And so what this calculator is going to do is it's going to allow you to pick a very specific product and the percentage concentration of that product, and your pool volume. And based on that information, it will tell you exactly how much a given amount of a specific product is going to change your water.
[00:14:59] Before I show this to you, understand that it is not complete yet. It's almost complete, but it's missing one very important variable. And that one very important variable is the pH. We know, we know it's not in there. I chose to release it right now so that we can get some user feedback on how this calculator functions.
[00:15:21] I think it's going to be a very popular calculator. So far, the feedback I've gotten has been. resoundingly positive. And we will add in the pH impact. For instance, Jarred, what is the pH impact of two tabs of trichlor going to do to your pool?
[00:15:36] Jarred Morgan: Was going to lead me to my next question is why would somebody find this reverse calculator valuable?
[00:15:42] Eric Knight: Well, put yourself in the shoes of a homeowner. You go to the pool store and you buy something. And they say, Hey, shock your pool with this. Or Hey, add this. Well, how much?
[00:15:52] Okay. It says add one bag or add two tabs or add whatever it's, it's a defined quantity. And for those people who like to round up, instead of just measuring, you want to see the actual impact based on your pool volume? Assuming you actually know the pool volume?
[00:16:08] Jarred Morgan: You mean to tell me we're catering to the generalist here?
[00:16:11] Eric Knight: Yeah.
[00:16:11] Jarred Morgan: That's yeah me
[00:16:12] Eric Knight: Yeah know it is. And I could tell because you don't listen to the Rule Your Pool podcast. So.
[00:16:18] Jarred Morgan: but I agree. This is a valuable thing because you're right. And it's, this is mainly for like when you have a bucket of chemicals in the back of your truck, you get either a blue scoop or an orange scoop or some scoop that comes with that container.
[00:16:32] You know how much that scoop is, or you should, at least. And you want to know what is this going to do to my water? Because you're right. I'm going to go for scoops. I'm not going for 16.4 ounces of soda ash. That's a little specific, a little hard to measure. We understand that, we get it. But at least you have a general idea of what you should be adding and you're not going way overboard.
[00:16:54] Now, in this case, you take a blue scoop, you add it to your, to water. You'll know what that's going to do. So that is a valuable piece of information because then you can make adjustments accordingly.
[00:17:01] Eric Knight: Yeah, you could decide how much of a product you want to add instead of deciding what part per million change you want to make. And you can do both of course.
[00:17:08] Eric Knight: The difference with this calculator, based on what we're trying to do with it, this is round one of three, like I said. pH impact will be in round two.
[00:17:16] And then we're not even going to discuss what round three is, but it's a big picture. So it's a very big vision of mine. Uh, it's behind this login screen. So is the LaMotte integration. So if you first log in, and you download the update to the app and you go to settings. The moment you enable that LaMotte integration, it's going to ask you to log in.
[00:17:35] Now, if you've ever taken Orenda Academy, you already have a login. It's the same email, same password that you would do to get into Orenda Academy. I explained this more in depth in episode. 144, 2 weeks ago.
[00:17:47] We tried to think of every possible way to get around having a login. Hell we held off for eight years. You'll still have the original LSI calculator, no password needed, no login, all that's still free.
[00:18:00] The new chemical calculator, because of what we're going to be doing with it, hopefully by the end of the year, if we're on pace, you're going to need that information so that it knows your profile of how you handle your pools.
[00:18:13] It's not going to change your everyday life or anything like that. Read our privacy policy, it's pretty standard. You can log in with Gmail. Soon we will have the API from Facebook. So you can just log in with your Facebook. It's really just a name and email address, but that way it knows where to save it in the cloud.
[00:18:30] Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to log in using my Gmail and then I'm going to show you how this calculator works. Here we go. Pretty easy integration. I just said, use my Gmail, typed in my Gmail information, logged in like that.
[00:18:51] And then it asks you for your name and you can optionally put in your phone number or company. You don't have to, that's why it's optional.
[00:18:57] And then it does need to know if you're a homeowner, distributor, commercial pro, residential pro, or pool builder and plaster. And the main reason for that is the feature set is going to be different.
[00:19:07] If you are a homeowner, you are going to have access to different features than a pool pro. It's not one way is better than the other. It's that if you're a pool pro, you're not going to want the homeowner features, and if you're a homeowner, you're not going to have any use for the pool pro features.
[00:19:21] So I'm going to do a homeowner just to show you. I'm going to select homeowner and then it's going to ask for my pool volume. Now this is where the login becomes clutch. If the app knows your pool volume, you don't have to keep entering it in.
[00:19:37] I used in my pool, 23,650 gallons. So I'm going to go ahead and type that in and I automatically, the default is the United States and all it asks for is your zip code. We don't want to know your address. The zip code helps us because if you do have a question and you submit that question, Jarred, I'm going to give you an example.
[00:19:56] If I'm a homeowner and I've got a problem and I need help and some Orenda support, instead of calling the phone number, it knows my zip code here. I could submit my pool as a question in the future, not there yet. Based on the zip code, we know who your local rep is going to be.
[00:20:11] We don't know where you live. We're not trying to invade privacy. We just want to know generally where are you in the country? Are you in the Northeast or are you in Miami?
[00:20:18] Jarred Morgan: I in Dallas or are you in Charlotte? Like,
[00:20:21] Eric Knight: Exactly. Does your pool freeze? That zip code tells us a lot without knowing personal details about you or your pool. Just knowing where the pool is tells us a lot about the type of water you're going to have, the type of considerations, where your calcium should be, for instance. Did your pool freeze? Is it always hot? Do you have high evaporation?
[00:20:39] All of these factors that we take into account when you call Orenda and ask us to troubleshoot your pools, a lot of what we ask is where are you located? Because that tells us so much. And so this is just going to automatically have that saved to your profile.
[00:20:53] Jarred Morgan: it's like the future state of a prescription because you're right. And we've talked about this multiple times. A pool in Phoenix, Arizona is managed very differently from a pool in Rhode Island.
[00:21:03] Eric Knight: completely differently.
[00:21:04] Jarred Morgan: And to be very clear here, for Eric's previous point. If you're a homeowner and if you choose a Pool Pro, that does not mean you're getting more features, cooler things, better stuff. It's really tailoring the experience specifically for you as a one pool user, for example,
[00:21:22] Eric Knight: yeah exactly.
[00:21:23] Jarred Morgan: But if a pool pro you're getting multiple pools, it's, it's going to be different because it just has to be.
[00:21:29]
[00:21:29] Eric Knight: Pool pros, we want you to be working with our partner softwares that are integrating with us, most of them are, and hopefully all of them will at some point. They can do way more than we can anyway. And they're going to be able to service your needs much better than we can on our own. That's why we're working with them.
[00:21:44] So if you have multiple pools, you're going to want to work with one of those softwares that integrates the Orenda calculator. Whereas if you're a homeowner, you could just have one pool and it will be able to save that for you. So that's the defining line between the two of them. But it really helps us know, based on the zip code, where you are so that we can help you out.
[00:22:00] Jarred Morgan: yeah. Do you want Eric answering your questions or do you want me? I mean, come on.
[00:22:04] Eric Knight: I mean, obviously they're going to want you. But we're not going to tell them which way.
[00:22:07] Eric Knight: Okay. So here is the chemical calculator, exciting times.
[00:22:10] Since I've already inputted my volume on the previous screen, it already knows it. So it's automatically in here. What I can do is I'm going to add a new chemical and I'm going to try to do this backwards by looking at the screen. And what it shows is I can add chlorine, alkalinity, calcium, salt, or cyanuric acid granular.
[00:22:29] And these are factors that I can raise. So, Jarred, pick one. Chlorine, alkalinity, calcium, salt, or CYA.
[00:22:36] Jarred Morgan: I want to take my chlorine up
[00:22:39] Eric Knight: which type of chlorine?
[00:22:40] Jarred Morgan: Well, liquid, obviously.
[00:22:42] Eric Knight: Okay. So I'm going to tap liquid chlorine, and now you see a very familiar user interface. You're going to see a toggle, just like we have at the top of the dosing results page or for secondary readings. And I can slide this. toggle left or right, and it's going to say, select your concentration.
[00:22:57] Now, liquid chlorine is primarily sold in 12.5%, which is what HASA makes, or 10%, which you can find in big box stores like Home Depot, Walmart, et cetera. You can get 10 percent in pool stores as well, but generally speaking, pro grade liquid chlorine is going to be 12.5% trade.
[00:23:15] But maybe you don't have the option. You can't get your hands on it. You have to use household bleach in a pinch. Not that we recommend that. Well, we don't, but it is sodium hypochlorite. It's just a lot weaker. So what I can do is I can come over here. And I can select a custom concentration and I'm going to put in 5.5 because that's what my household bleach is.
[00:23:37] And now I just select how much I want to add to my pool. And it's going to tell me the impact. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to say, I'm going to add one gallon and one gallon is going to impact my pool with 2.33 parts per million chlorine. Assuming I'm using that strength.
[00:23:54] Now notice 2.33 parts will change if I change my concentration. I changed it to 10%, now it's 4.23. I changed it up to 12.5, and now it's 5.29.
[00:24:07] Jarred Morgan: And you're assuming that that, uh, household liquid bleach at 5.5 percent hasn't been sitting on the shelf for two months. So just understand.
[00:24:13] Eric Knight: Well, the degradation curve slows down, Jarred. You should know this if you were paying attention in the show notes.
[00:24:17] I do, but it still happens, but go ahead.
[00:24:20] It's also going to show you that it temporarily impacts total alkalinity, and it will also impact your TDS and salt levels. These are hyperlinked, so you can tap these. And you'll get a pop up that will explain it. Again, anything underlined in the app, go ahead and tap it. It's going to tell you more information that you need.
[00:24:40] The point is I'm going to be able to select a volume of a specific chemical that I want to use. And it's going to tell me the chemical impact that that has on my pool.
[00:24:49] Now I'm going to shrink this and I'm going to go ahead. I've got my chlorine one there. I'm going to add another one. What should we do this time?
[00:24:56] Jarred Morgan: let's do calcium.
[00:24:58] Eric Knight: Okay. Calcium. Do we want to use the 77 to 80%? The 94 percent or a custom percent?
[00:25:07] Jarred Morgan: 77 to whatever that
[00:25:08] Eric Knight: 80 is going to be flake. Now in this case, we're not doing ounces because nobody uses ounces in calcium chloride because the volumes tend to be much bigger. So we go in five pound increments and we're just going to go up. I'm going to say, how about a 50 pound bag? I could buy a 50 pound bag and look at that on my pool.
[00:25:26] That's going to add 179.35 parts per million of calcium to my pool. If I want to do two bags, it's a hundred pounds. It automatically changes to 358.7. So very quickly, I'm going to be able to say I've got this bucket of some product or I've got this bag of something else, or I've got this little one pound bag of a certain type of shock or whatever it is.
[00:25:52] This calculator is going to tell you exactly what it's going to do. I think you get the general idea. Just understand right now, it does not have the pH impacts yet. And the reason for that is the amount of math and complexity of doing that is more than everything we've built so far times three or more.
[00:26:08] It's way more complicated to have the pH impacts in there, but we will have it in the next version. That's what we're working on now. I made a decision that we wanted to release the LaMotte integration and get this first version out.
[00:26:23] Eric Knight: Over the years we've learned, if you try to build something to perfection and the customers don't have feedback on it, You're never going to do it right anyway.
[00:26:31] So we want your feedback. So let us know what you think about this calculator. Be brutally honest with us. Email me podcast@orendatech.Com. You can also reach out through the help center, ask.orendatech.com. Read the tutorials and go through the app section of how to actually use this stuff. I will be creating some help articles on how to use the chemical calculator and the new features that are not yet in it.
[00:26:54] Um, a little bit of a teaser, like we said, homeowners, you are soon, not yet, soon going to be able to save your chemistry history, but you have to log in for that to work.
[00:27:08] Eric Knight: And that brings you to our last point, Jarred. What was the feedback in the last two days ever since we made a change on the website? Go ahead,
[00:27:16] Jarred Morgan: Well, apparently there's a lot of you that use our website calculator that, uh, quite honestly, we were unaware of. Um, so sorry.
[00:27:25] Eric Knight: I had no idea how many people used that website calculator. I would have thought hardly anyone uses it. We were wrong.
[00:27:35] Jarred Morgan: it was like within five minutes, Email, email.
[00:27:39] Eric Knight: text, text, email. Bling! I mean,
[00:27:45] Jarred Morgan: But honestly, uh,
[00:27:46] I
[00:27:46] Eric Knight: was, it was, it was like almost as many podcast listeners as we have that we're just not happy with the change that we made. And I want to
[00:27:53] Jarred Morgan: did we pass out, did we pass a hundred yet?
[00:27:56] Eric Knight: Are you going backward? I guess you're going backwards and listeners. We're trying to get to 300 by the end of the year. Stick with the joke, Jarred. It's 2024.
[00:28:02] Jarred Morgan: I don't know. I, Eric, it's been a minute.
[00:28:05] Eric Knight: Yeah, Are
[00:28:08] Jarred Morgan: we picking up like an average of two or three listeners per episode? What's the, what's the rate?
[00:28:12] Eric Knight: Well, when you're on here, we lose listeners. So it's probably
[00:28:16] Jarred Morgan: Good. I got to keep it, uh, I got to keep the good people in our stable.
[00:28:20] Eric Knight: We've stagnated. So here's why we made this change on the website. And by the way, as of 10 minutes ago, we have reverted to the original calculator because the hate mail was getting a little bit heated. Some guy was like, he actually wrote profanity. He was so mad, like so furious that we changed his free calculator.
[00:28:38] Like, damn dude, it's. It's a pool chemistry calculator. It's not like it's a medical device or something, but
[00:28:45] Jarred Morgan: And this is why we just can't have nice things,
[00:28:48] Eric Knight: I know seriously, gosh, you know, no amount of added value for free is going to lead to gratitude and grace when something changes, but
[00:28:57] Jarred Morgan: well,
[00:28:57] and this is also why we have to be mindful of minor changes that you may think of, Hey, why don't, can't we just input our numbers into the calculator to get where we want to go? Well, because if we did that, there'd be a lot more angry users and listeners.
[00:29:11] Eric Knight: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot to consider when you have as many app users as we have. And people do depend on this every single day to make a living. And we respect that. We hear you. We did not change the formulas or anything in the app. We didn't even change the formulas on the website calculator.
[00:29:27] There was a bug, but that was a mistake. Essentially what we did was we were doing some testing to see how does this function on a desktop? Like if you're on a laptop or something, is it navigatable? Can you roll the dials? You have to touch and drag it. It's, it's just a different user experience than the one that was on the website where you just touch and you type in your value and get really specific.
[00:29:49] And that was the overwhelming feedback. Pardon?
[00:29:51] Jarred Morgan: There's more space so we could do it.
[00:29:53] Eric Knight: Yeah, it's a bigger screen. Um, well, the resounding feedback was they hate having the mobile user experience on the desktop because it's harder to use. And it's also not as precise because dials go in increments of 5, 10, or 100, depending on what it is, instead of being able to type in the exact values, we hear you.
[00:30:12] Thank you for the feedback. No need to use profanity in it, but, um, we have reverted that temporarily. What we're going to try to do is we're going to try to do the features that we want to do and utilize the user interface that you're used to on the website. It's easier said than done. I think the juice will be worth the squeeze when the ability to save your information is going to be in there.
[00:30:35] Eric Knight: So anyways, that's all I have in this episode of getting out of this major app update that we just rolled out without announcement, basically. Um, the LaMotte WaterLink SpinTouch® integration is done. There is a login. We talked about why we need the login so that we could do what we want to do in the future.
[00:30:53] We talked about the chemical calculator. Is there anything I'm forgetting, Jarred?
[00:30:56]
[00:30:56] Jarred Morgan: I don't think there's anything that I'm forgetting, but I'm saying happy summer to everybody. I hope everybody's not battling their pools and fighting with it. I hope you're making it enjoyable and easy. And I'm happy to be on here. Uh, hopefully Eric will invite me back more often than he has, but he's just kind of a selfish guy when it comes to this podcast. He really loves it. Um, it's his baby. So, uh, thank you all for listening. Thank you all for putting up with Eric in these long summer months.
[00:31:24] Eric Knight: I want the podcast all to myself.
[00:31:27] Jarred Morgan: Yes. So I just got to, I got to come in here and make sure that he's actually doing podcasts cause I don't listen to them. So here we are.
[00:31:33] Eric Knight: Speaking of which, talking about the summer and I hope your pool care is going smoothly. My pool is looking awesome ever since the renovation with Micro Glass and Pentair equipment. It's got a sand filter on it. Who says you can't have stunning water quality with a sand filter? That's what people kept saying. Oh, why would you put a sand filter on there?
[00:31:51] My water looks amazing. I'm still doing the six ounces a week of CV-600, one gallon a week of liquid chlorine. I haven't added acid since the renovation. I'm
[00:32:01] Jarred Morgan: Well, I guess needed to let people figure it out. Maybe it's the sand, maybe it's the Orenda products you're putting in there. We'll never know.
[00:32:06] Eric Knight: Maybe, but I know that my water is very low maintenance and I, I do have to net it. Pretty frequently with leaves and I, and I need to vacuum. But apart from that, I got to tell you that a variable speed pump, whoo, so much nicer than the single speed that I had. You can't even hear it running. It's amazing.
[00:32:25] So anyway things are good on that front. This has been episode 146, talking about Orenda app version 5.0. If you have any questions, you know how to reach us. I'm your host, Eric Knight with Orenda and HASA. This is my wannabe cohost, Jarred Morgan, and we appreciate all of you.
[00:32:41] Jarred Morgan: I'm still glad that you call me a co host. It really makes me feel good. Thanks Yeah, it.
[00:32:46] Eric Knight: Keep, keep skating down this line. You're going to lose that naming privilege. We'll call you something else. I don't know
[00:32:51] Uh,
[00:32:51] Jarred Morgan: you're just going to have to have somebody else to fill the gap. So I don't know.
[00:32:53] Eric Knight: I just had a shoulder surgeon on the last episode. You have some big shoes to fill man.
[00:32:59] Jarred Morgan: I'm excited about our next episode too. That's going to be a good one.
[00:33:01] Eric Knight: Oh yeah. That's going to be really cool. We have a very cool guest in the next episode. Honestly, I can't even believe he agreed to be on the show because he is easily the famous person we've ever had on this show.
[00:33:12] Jarred Morgan: 100%. I'm surprised too. Because when you sent me that text, I was like, really? I don't know what we're going to talk about. I know what he's going to talk about, but I have no value to offer here, whatsoever.
[00:33:21] Eric Knight: You'll hear it in the next episode 147. Anyways, thanks for listening and take care.
[00:33:26]