Quebec, Canada-based Xpertsea has announced that the company’s XperCount software has now been developed to the point that it can be used on a smartphone.
The software, according to an XpertSea release, allows shrimp farmers to count, size, weigh, and image animal samples using a smartphone with a camera. Previously, the company’s XperCount used 11 pounds of hardware to accomplish the same thing.
The new app, the company said, will allow greater access to data collection for shrimp farmers.
“Too many shrimp farmers operate without the benefit of accurate, standardized data, and this hinders their operations and hurts their bottom line,” XpertSea Co-Founder and CEO Valerie Robitaille said. “We wanted to create an easily accessible, ultra-portable tool that would make data collection fast, easy, and reliable so that any farmer can unlock better crops and financial outcomes. With our mobile app, farmers of any size and means can use their phone to monitor pond growth and make better decisions, which improves profitability and sustainability.”
Using the app and a picture of the shrimp, farmers “gain instant, easy access to transparent and reliable information such as average body weight, growth rate, and weight distribution,” the company said.
“XpertSea’s innovative smartphone app saves a huge amount of time and generates very accurate sampling data. This enables precise measurements of the size and frequency distribution of the population to be made more often," Zeigler Bros Director of Research and Development Craig Browdy said. Zeigler Bros. is a provider of premium feeds that has been collaborating with XpertSea on the development of the app. “The app provides a combination of powerful growth and feeding models driven by AI, and the ability to share and exchange information from pondside to management and expertise anywhere in the world in real time.”
That data in turn allows farmers to tailor their feed regimes and identify and issues quickly, replacing more time-consuming manual sampling of shrimp populations.
“Using the app to measure shrimp growth is very useful,” Nguyen Van Teo, a manager of a high-tech farm in the Bac-Lieu cooperative in Vietnam, said. “The number of samples taken is higher, faster and more accurate than conventional manual shrimp sampling. Shrimp are healthy when sampled, free from injury and the data is stored and managed on a real-time online database.”
The app is currently available to shrimp farmers in Ecuador, and to farmers working with XpertSea’s enterprise partners elsewhere.
Photo courtesy of XpertSea
