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      Arable Backend API 3.2.0 Release Notes

      Arable Backend API 3.2.0 Release Notes Doc Number: ARA2021-00011 Rev A Date: August 30, 2021

      Release Overview

      Arable API 3.2.0 is a release supporting Arable Mobile and Arable Web with API routes for the new Sites framework and Water Insights feature package. These new endpoint routes are not yet published to external customers, as they are still being matured. We expect to start rolling these out with the next release.

      For this release, several new roles have been added to the system. We created a DISTRIBUTOR role to support our resellers, so you can create a new tenant in the system for any new customer you sign up. A second role, CALIBRATED_DATA_USER, enables a paid feature for the researcher segment related to 5-minute, high-granularity data access over the Arable API. 


      Several new forecast measurements have been added to the forecast route, including Growing Degree Days (GDD) and Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD). The other main endpoints supported for the       Arable Developer API are listed in this file.

      We hope you will enjoy this new release. We always welcome your feedback through Customer Success (support@arable.com) or via your account manager. 

      Date

      August 30,  2021

      Instance affected

      Production

      Components

      api-device 1.4.0

      api-user 3.26.0 

      data-processing 0.14.0

      api-weather 2.10.0

      app-admin 1.11.0

      postgresDB 12.0.0

      APIs

      Documentation: https://developer.arable.com/

      URL: https://api.arable.cloud/api/v2/

      3rd Party Sensors

      Sentek Drill and Drop Soil Moisture Probe DD-MTS and DD-MT

      Davis Wind Anemometer 6410 and 7911

      GEMS PS41 Series Pressure Switch

      Type of Release

      Minor Release

      Version

      3.2.0

       

      List of Changes

      New Features

       

      Description

      A new role CALIBRATED_DATA_USER has been created for those who need 5-minute granularity for the Arable Mark measurement data. This is a paid feature; to enable it, contact your account representative. 

      A new DISTRIBUTOR role will allow partners who resell Arable to create new tenants in the system. As Org Admins, they can invite new users to this tenant.

      We changed the way device states are handled, to avoid showing a lot of devices in inactive state (e.g., pulled out of the field without a proper undeployment). If a device has not communicated for more than 9 months, it will automatically set to a removed state. If it starts communicating again, it will switch back to an active state without any manual intervention. 

      The api-user now supports ETo (reference crop evapotranspiration) in addition to ETc (crop evapotranspiration) to give the option for users to apply their own custom Kc value instead of the one generated from the Arable NDVI. 

      To help better support spray timing decisions, an hourly Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD) parameter has been added to the forecast route. The forecast is based on the nearest remote-sensed station served by The Weather Company. The measurement unit is mbar, and the forecast period is 2 days. VPD complements other forecast measurements such as Max Temperature, Relative Humidity, Rainfall and Wind Speed for a complete spray timing decision matrix.

      The Growing Degree Days (GDD) calculator now supports a forecasting function based on remote-sensed temperature data from The Weather Company. The forecast covers the next 14 days. 

      Permission requirements have been relaxed so that any user can create and edit a growing season. We hope this will encourage the use of growing seasons and alerting on growth stage thresholds.

      Arable Customer Success has new tools to help you keep your account data clean. It is now possible in the Arable AppAdmin to not only archive locations, but also sites and crop categories. 

      Arable Customer Success now has additional flexibility to designate new custom analytics dashboards to specific users. It is now possible to designate a dashboard to be “Is Mobile Only” or “Is Sites Only.” Tailored dashboards can more easily be provided to different user groups. 

      Any default alert subscriptions are now specific to each organization where they are set, instead of applied to all your organizations. Every user can now delete a site-specific alert definition. Finally, in order to avoid excessive alerts, we have standardized using a 6-hour hysteresis unless otherwise described in the info modals.  


      Defect Fixes

      Description

      We updated our rainfall processing system to address some recent instances of underreporting. In some cases, if a data record's time stamp overlapped with another (say, both wind and rain were reported at exactly the same time), only one of them was recorded, resulting in a possible undercount of either wind or rainfall data. This may have affected some of your past data. We have a fix already in place to gather clean data moving forward. Please reach out to your account rep if you'd like more info.

      Tenant naming is now more flexible and allows names as short as two characters, enabling Arable Customer Success to use the short abbreviated form of your organization name as needed.

      Previously, if an external sensor and/or Bridge were disconnected, the device(s) would not be removed from the API (or Web/Mobile UI), in order to be able to access historical data. A separation of data storage and sensor/Bridge status has now been implemented so that the status is updated if the Bridge is removed.


      Known Issues

      Description

      An entire organization should transition to using Sites all at the same time, since naming convention is different than with the location view, and could cause confusion if some have transitioned and others have not. If it is not possible to update the complete org to Sites all at once, please use Sites for dedicated devices and users to limit any impact on other users. An automated naming for new Arable Mark deployments will occur as soon as one of the device owners has Sites enabled. The location name will then be device ID + deployment time stamp. Note that users who have location-view enabled can still go and edit this name in the Weather tab.  

      It can take several minutes (up to an hour) to see measurement data after a new installation if the unit was not properly undeployed after the previous installation, as data will have been collected during transport and the Mark will send its data in FIFO mode. 

      If GPS isn't available at a deployment (e.g., deployed indoors), the deployment may fail with a server-side exception. It is important to note that the Arable system is currently based on the availability of GPS in order to provide accurate locations on maps and in calculations. We are looking into how we can operate better with adding the GPS coordinates via the API (and UI) if not automatically reported by the Arable Mark 2.

      The deployment of a Bridge is not immediately posted in the API (nor Web/Mobile UI) even if the Mark or Bridge device light UI shows it as connected. This is because the Bridge status is not provided in the same deployment message like other metadata from the Arable Mark. We will review options to improve this for an upcoming release.

      While the API documentation at https://developer.arable.com/ is helpful, it is auto-generated and is missing a list of all available endpoints. We will add this into the Guide section in the future. In the meantime, if you need more help related to understanding the endpoints available on each API route, please review this file or contact Arable Customer Success via the Help icon in your app.