When I first joined the team at Halter, I became part of the mobile team tasked with developing their revolutionary dairy farming app.
For a while, I was one of two engineers working on the mobile application. Within the first few months of joining, we scaled from 2 - 3 farms to over 20 farms.
As the product gained traction, our team quickly grew to include additional engineers, product managers, and designers to help scale the app and meet the increasing demands of our users.
Hardware Integration
A unique challenge at Halter was the tight integration between the app and the smart cow collars. I worked closely with the hardware and backend teams to ensure seamless communication between the app and the collars. Some of the features I worked on:
- Shifting - how does a farmer guide & shift their cows around a farm
- Virtual Fencing - how does a farmer create virtual fences to keep cows in or out of certain areas
- In-Paddock Drafting - how does a farmer automatically draft cows in the paddock - World first
- Pasture Optimisation - how does a farmer optimise pasture usage for their cows
- Health Monitoring - how does a farmer proactively monitor the health of their herd in real-time
Guidance Features
I contributed heavily to the development of our Guidance features, which form the core of Halter's value proposition. This included implementing complex algorithms for virtual fencing, automated cow shifting, and in-paddock drafting. These features required a deep understanding of both software development and animal behavior.
Testing and Reliability
Given the critical nature of our app in farm operations, ensuring reliability was paramount. We implemented a comprehensive testing strategy, including unit tests, integration tests, and on-farm beta testing. This helped us identify and resolve issues quickly, ensuring a stable experience for our farmers.
Performance Optimization
As our user base grew, so did the performance demands on our app. I led efforts to optimize the app's performance, particularly in areas like real-time cow tracking and data synchronization between the app and our cloud services.
User Experience
Designing an intuitive interface for a complex system was a significant challenge. We worked closely with farmers to understand their needs and workflows, iterating on our UI/UX to create an app that was powerful yet easy to use, even for those less comfortable with technology.
Scalability
As Halter expanded to serve hundreds of farmers and manage hundreds of thousands of cows, ensuring the app's scalability became crucial. We refactored key parts of the app to handle increased data loads and implemented efficient data management strategies to maintain responsiveness.
Impact
It's been incredibly rewarding to see the technology I helped developed make a real difference in the agricultural sector. Halter has transformed the way farmers manage their herds, allowing them to spend more time with their families and less time on manual herd management tasks. The positive feedback from farmers about how the technology has improved their lives continues to be a source of motivation.
