PROCESS. ANALYZE. MANAGE.    Home    Products    Downloads    Agents  Contact    About    Search

Fairport News

Historical FTI news articles and PRESS RELEASES
Download PDF Version of this newsletter - Get PDF Viewer here

SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2007

IN THIS ISSUE

» Welcome
» Rogers Ramblings
» PAM News There's lots !!!
» Fairport Web Site News
» Pasture Watch News
» Windows Vista Information
» Dealer News
    » FarmTek Australia
    » AgIT
    » Boothtech
» In Closing

Once again we welcome all our new and old clients and especially those of you reading the Fairport News for the first time!

Once again our thoughts go out to all of you suffering the consequences of the terrible drought here in Australia. While some are experiencing the best year ever, the vast majority of you are experiencing the complete opposite.

Fairport will be 20 years old in June next year. Many of the past 10 years have been pretty tough going for the rural sector, so life for our dealer network has not always been easy. Thanks to our diversification the Fairport business is going from strength to strength. While probably a bit early to tell, our 20th year is looking like being the best ever. This can be attributed to our increasing international activity, our penetration into the top and mid-tier sectors of the wine industry and new and improved technologies; like interfaces with the likes of John Deere and Case IH, KEE and Rinex. In addition to the above, we are finding more and more medium sized farming enterprises are realising the benefits that can be gained from the PAM Enterprise system with its ability to centralise vital farm records.

We are finding that the drought conditions can induce interest in new technologies…

Irrigation water restrictions in the Murray Darling system has caused an increased interest in the Greenseeker technology. Greenseeker can detect plant stress in grapes, so the maps it generates can be useful in guiding management decisions in these tough times.

The interest in the Pasture Watch – Pastures from Space technology is also on the increase, particularly in Eastern Australia. Consultants are realising the usefulness of pasture budgeting, pasture growth rate awareness and therefore micro-managing pastures and grazing pressures in these trying times.

Soiltech is a service company based here in WA and run by David York. Amongst other services, they provide a geo-located soil testing service. The test results are delivered to Soiltech and using a small utility program, they convert the results into the PAM laboratory test import file format to send to their clients. Soiltech have been running a PAM Multiclient system for many years and are now approaching 1000 clients in their PAM system … with over 16 Gigabytes of PAM data. Soiltech recently installed the network version of PAM in their office so all staff can access and enter data simultaneously. Soiltech: 08 9364 4951

Colin has been extremely busy these past months with interest in PAM coming from all angles. He manned the Fairport stand at the Wine Tech conference in Adelaide and has made several trips to Adelaide and Melbourne for meetings and demonstrations and installations.

I have been away again to Brisbane and NZ meeting with our PAM Enterprise clients and planning to do it all again soon!

STAFF MATTERS

We have recently increased our developer staffing levels on a short term basis to help cope with the increased work load. We welcome Steve Bliss, who has come over from Adelaide, for at least 4 months and David Wynne, who is a local and helping us out for 2 days per week. We have also had help from Dushyant Dave on a part time basis.

[top]

John Deere & Case interface

The Fairport - John Deere Greenstar 2 interface has been completed and is undergoing final testing by John Deere. Farmstar will also read in the Greenstar harvest data from your storage card to allow you to creat yield maps. We are expecting to release all these fetures with PAM Version 6. The PAM+FarmStar and FarmStar Lite interfaces with Greenstar 2 and older Greenstar systems for “Field Docs” (PAM paddock records), Variable Rate (VRT) and yield data types.

The Agleader interface will be following shortly. This will allow all clients with Case IH harvesters to download all their yield data too. This interface will eventaully include VRT also.

 

PAM 6 - Out Now!

After many months (almost 12) of beta testing and enhancing the PAM program version 6 is now ready for release. The list of additional features was in the last Fairport Newsletter but in case you missed it, here it is again.

General
• Livestock and Paddock Activities Add Wizards can
now be resized and made to go "full screen"
• New "View" option in the PA Diary to look at the
details of a job (without going to the edit screen) …
which is a report that can be printed
• GP Diary - Now Full Screen
• Contacts Manager - Totally new screen to manage all
your contacts (Contractors, Staff, Vendors,
Customers, Agents, Transporters etc)
• Indicator Paddocks - Indicator paddocks are used as
" representative paddocks" for pasture monitoring or
soil testing. Useful where you have lots of small
paddocks of similar soil type and management (eg.
Dairy farmers)
• Pasture Covers / FOO / PGR can now be entered via
the PA Diary as well as a new quick data entry
screen.
• Chemical Database: Subscribe to InfoPest and you'll
have the complete list of chemicals in PAM. There
are a number of very good QA enhancements as a
result of this improvement. All PAM 6 upgrades
come with a sample Chemical Database system that
enables you to get an idea of how it would work
when fully populated with InfoPest data.

Cropping
• Pasture - Improved handling of Pasture sowing etc,
particularly for perennial pastures.
• Perennial Crops - improves handling of perennial
crops in general - particularly useful to sugar cane
growers, lucerne growers.

Livestock
• Ability to enter Livestock records in any date order
• Ability to edit and delete past transactions
• New activities wizard - more user friendly
• New style of perform agistment activities - more user
friendly
• New concept - "Reproductive Season' - used to give
more accurate reporting of offspring %'s
• New Shearing & Crutching event.
• Shearing & Crutching can be performed from the
Wool screen.
• New Bales to Mobs allocation system
• New Bales Description allocation system

Mapping
• Mapping: When creating a new layer you can now
stipulate the layer type. I.e. Polygon, Line, Symbol…
restricting the layer to that one object type.
• Mapping: Text Size (Ctrl + / -) Up/Down option to
increase or decrease the size of labels (Handy for
seeing very small labels, Mob Codes and printing)
• Mapping - Livestock Mobs: There are now a set of
options that enable you to set up the display of mob
symbols and text to your liking
• Mapping - Polygons with holes - you can now draw
'donuts" … E.g. Paddock polygons with holes to
exclude bush.
• Mapping - Info Button - Select the Info Button, then
click on a paddock to bring up its details, or a mob's
details, or a soil test result etc.

Individual Animal Records
Commercial
• Many New Lifetime Traits
• Lifetime traits - customisable.
• Transaction history for Old Tags
• Ability to name a mating group.
• Special animal "Flag" field to warn operators in the
yards for any purpose.
• Highlight quarantined animals
• Make trait ranges mandatory on set up, and validate
imported data.
• Ability to merge traits.
• Maintenance screen for Fate codes.
• List of Death options for Fate code: Death
• Storage of % breed composition for each animal.
• Allocation of numbers to Dead offspring
• "Just Imported" Flag
• User defined configuration of IAR screen columns
• Livestock activity Wizards incorporated into IAR -
Over 5 months work has gone into these new
enhancements alone.
• Big enhancements to Importing and Exporting data
• Creating new animals when importing data.
• Many improvements to Filter dialog box.
3 Fairport News
• Special animal "Flag" field to warn operators in the
yards for any purpose.
• Highlight quarantined or "Flagged" animals
• At user level ability to filter the traits displayed on the
main IAR screen.
• Tag Bucket File Import Screen - add the Typical
Visual ID prefixes to the Tag Bucket Visual ID's
• Perform all livestock activities either using mob
selection of by selecting (or importing) a list of
animals (regardless of their mob)
• And, coming later this year: live NLIS database
interface via the internet.

Stud
• Distinguish between Breeding Value traits and others
and display on a separate tab.
• Link BV's and Indexes to a Breed and Sex.
• Pregnancy Test Activity in IAR enhanced
• Ability to Import DNA test Results
• Accommodate Breed Society requirements - mostly
file export.
• Ability for user defined groups of Animals to be
allocated a performance group number and
description.

 

[top]

The page on our web site that gets the most hits is the
FAQ page www.fairport.com.au/FAQ. You can search
through a list of topics such as “Mapping” or
“ Livestock” you can also do a “Keyword” search such
as “multiple crops” and you will get a list of possible
answers.

The latest Upgrades of all our software is also on the
web site www.fairport.com.au/Upgrades for Fairport
Club Members. If you are not a current member and
want to keep up to date as well as receiving 1800
support just contact our office, we will explain all the
benefits and join you to the growing list of members.

[top]

Pasture Watch / Pastures From Space News

Fairport has developed a network version of the Pasture Watch software to meet the needs of Consultants and Corporate clients wanting to share their data accross a network (LAN or WAN). There has also been some special Pastures from Space annual subscription types set up to cater for these clients.

Any Consultants wishing to offer additional services to their clients should contact us to discuss the opportunities of having a group of clients set up with Pastures from Space subscriptions.

[top]

Windows Vista Information

Earlier this year, Microsoft officially launched Vista, the latest version of its operating system for desktop and laptop computers. Unfortunately for Palm OS users, the current version of the Palm Desktop does not fully support Vista. While Palm Desktop will install and can synchronize the general Palm data, Quick Install (the desktop application that allows users to move files like .PRC and .PDB to a device) is not currently Vista compatible.

 

However, a company called Business Technology Solved has developed PalmVista Simple Installer, an application that performs the same tasks as Palm Quick Install, but offers support for Windows Vista. The latest version of this application, 1.0.0.4 which released March 31, can install any Palm compatible file to the handheld's or smartphone's internal storage, plus it can copy any file to a memory expansion card.

A public beta version is available as freeware. Naturally, it requires the Palm Desktop to be installed on the same PC in order to function.

Vista Quick Installer can be downloaded from the Business Technology Solved web site (scroll down to the bottom of the home page).

Here is the download link PALM VISTA INSTALLER This is on the Fairport Website in the Support Page – Windows Vista Compatibility

NOTE you may also need version 4.1.4e of PALM Desktop as well PALM DOWNLOAD PAGE

 

There were a few issues with some of our software running in Windows Vista.

These were relating to the help files and have been resolved as follows –
Pam QA, Ultracrop & Ausvit – Fixed in version 6.
GP Mapper & Farmstar Lite – Fixed in version 5.6.9
Grape Forecaster – Fixed in version 1.5.2
MAX Pro – Fixed in version 1.3.0

Those clients using Pocket PAM with Pocket PC handhelds may have an issue with registration if they are not using the latest Version 6.1 of Windows Mobile Device previous versions may not pick up the device name when doing the registration. The HP Ipaq 2490 in one model we know of that does this.

 

FarmTek Australia VIC - SA - TAS

Good news – FarmBIS is now up and running for NSW and Victoria. I have 2 courses registered.

PAM QA+ $115 – full day
PAM Mapping $75 – ½ day

The funding is for group training. Additional funding is available to cover any travel costs incurred to attend.

I have also registered courses with FarmBIS TASMANIA. This is for on:farm and group.

Group Training $135 per person
On:Farm $500 per day

I have scheduled the following courses:

PAM QA+
Wagga Wagga – 15 October
Deniliquin - 17 October

PAM Mapping
Wagga Wagga – 16 October
Deniliquin – 17 October

To be confirmed:
Bendigo : 5-9 December
Tasmania
Launceston and Hobart
10-14 December

Call 0429930770 for further information

 

Joanne Richardson
FarmTek Australia
Ph 1300 553 446
Email: Joanne@farmtek.com.au

[top]

AgIT - NSW & QLD

The last 3 months has seen quite a bit of training, great to see Queenslanders taking advantage of the FarmBis support available to them.

The application is in for the new NSW FarmBis scheme and we should see that approved in the next couple of weeks. The NSW scheme does not allow one-on-one training and we will need to arrange at least 4 separate companies per training session to be eligible for FarmBis in NSW, so as soon as we have the go-ahead we will be contacting all clients in NSW and organising training sessions throughout the state.

Don’t forget that the monthly help notes by AG IT are available for download at www.agit.com.au/support. Take a look; there are great tips and tricks to help you make the most of your PAM software.

Don’t forget that AG IT is available for support, so if you need a hand, please call or email through your query.

If you are in, or around Warialda in North East New South Wales on the 19th of October, why not stop in and say hello at the McMaster Research Station Open Day.
The open day will launch the McMaster Mixed Farming System Trial (8 years with 3 farms running 3 different systems – 150 ha in size)
For more information, please call AG IT, Dr Chris Guppy (UNE) on (02) 6773 3567

 

Paul Olsen
Ag IT
2-8 Serengetti Drive
MUNRUBEN QLD 4125
Ph/Fax: (07) 3802 1458
Mobile: 0419 727 086
Sales & Support: 1800 658 998
email: paul@agit.com.au

[top]

Booth Technology - WA

Need PAM training…?
Booth Technology runs PAM Training Seminars at our
Perth Office during the last week of every month.
You can now claim up to 65% of the seminar cost
through FarmBis WA

On the road again…
PAM Training and On Farm Demonstrations
Stephen Jasper will be in the Jerramungup region between the 15th – 19th October

Ben Comann will be in –
Margaret River region between 15th – 19th October
Manjimup region between 22nd – 26th October

For further assistance please call Booth Technology on
(08) 9383 4443

Stephen Jasper – 0415 133 725
Ben Coman – 0414 408 458
Email: sales@boothtech.com.au

[top]

The Fairport Team wishes all our clients and friends the best of luck for rest of the year

... Until DECEMBER !