Hi Everyone,
First : I’d like to thank the software developers who’ve created this Trap.NZ the website and mobile app.
It is great that we’re able to share our data via the TrapNZ site and database.
Second : I trap in an urban environment, and have mouse / rat and possum traps on my property.
The challenge : it is too hard to log kills for my traps, so I do it but it is a pain to do.
The rest of this post is about why it is difficult and how it may be improved.
Please comment if you have the same trouble.
I’m putting this into the forum because several other people I know who have traps have basically given up logging their kills.
Basically :
I can log catches if I use the website “add catches” page.
https://www.trap.nz/view/add-catches
or
If I use the mobile app, click a trap, enter the data, then click save. Then when I’m done click Synchronise.
But it could be better, it takes less time to remove a rat and rebait a trap than log that one kill.
So … As an urban trapper I want logging a kill (thing I do the most) to be the fastest easist thing to do in the phone app. Because then I’ll log the kills right away rather than waiting a few weeks, then trying to remember what we’ve killed and entering it then.
One way to make that happen:
- have the app remember me all the time.
It doesn’t have financial or personal information inside it so just make it log in for ever with my username and password so I don’t have to remember my username and password. - Show me my traps at the very start. Not a map, but a list of traps.
The system knows I’m a member of a project, BUT it also knows the traps I’ve updated in the past (the database has my name against a list of traps that I’ve added, and or logged catches against). Use the data you have to just show the list of traps I’ve done something to in the past X months or days. - Give me a catch button for each trap.
- Click the catch button for a trap shows me: animal I caught in that trap last time, bait I used last time, etc etc The mobile app does this to some extent now. But not the species caught.
The system knows what type of trap each one is (and yes sometimes a rat trap catches a mouse) but have the default kill set to the thing the trap is designed for. OR better yet what I usually catch. Honestly why is cat an option when the trap type is “Rat trap”. - Click save button
- Show me the list of traps again.
Rinse and repeat.
If the system was like this I could go out, reset all my traps (2 mice, several rat, one possum), dispose of the dead bodies, then pull out my phone and log the catches and the total time would be about 10mins.
Tonight I sat down to do a months worth of catches and it took me an hour, partly due to several 500 errors in the mobile app json page and it not sending the data to the website. [ if i can get screen shot I’ll log it as a different message in the forum]
An improvement to this for those looking after long lines of traps would be to have the list of traps shown be those close to the phone e.g. only show traps in the list within 500m of the phone’s location. But you should talk to the folks walking those lines to see how they work.
Please take this as constructive suggestion rather than being negative. I really appreciate the effort that has gone into the TrapNZ system. I hope this user story helps the development team understand one way that this user works.
Comment below if you think this would help you out so the TrapNZ team can gauge if this sort of work should be prioritised.
Many thanks Dorje
